Months after being detained by U.S. immigration officials with her seven-year-old daughter, a Canadian mother says the recent cancellation of her scheduled hearing has left them in a “deportation freeze.”
Tania Warner was forced to wear an ankle monitor and required to attend hearings to determine her status in the United States. If the judge rules against her, she will have to leave the U.S. and return to British Columbia. Tania’s daughter, Ayla, has autism.
Warner, who moved from Penticton, B.C., to Texas five years ago to join her American husband, told CTV Your Morning on Monday that her lawyer was also “in the dark” about the hearing reviewing her immigration case that was supposed to take place June 23.
When Your Morning asked about Warner’s immigration case, the Executive Office for Immigration Review said in a statement it “does not comment on cases before the agency.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Your Morning in a statement that it has “no information to provide on this individual at this time.”
“From what I understand, there was an injunction in the federal district court of California that basically gave us our rights back and so we’re in a deportation freeze essentially,” Warner told Your Morning from Kingsville, Texas, noting that she is consulting with a civil rights lawyer. “Outside of that, we don’t know anything.”
Warner told CTV News on March 27 that she had been “unlawfully detained” in Texas. Warner said she and her daughter were in the process of applying for a green card before they were detained by ICE at a border checkpoint in south Texas on March 14. They were released from custody on April 2.
Warner’s husband, Edward Warner, is a registered sex offender in Texas. He previously told CTV News that he received deferred adjudication in his case and is seeking clemency for an incident in 1999 when he was a teenager.
Tania said she didn’t get an option for Ayla not to be detained with her, though a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CTV News in a statement in late March that ICE doesn’t separate families and would offer to “place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
The spokesperson said “if you overstay your visa and are in the country illegally, you will be arrested.”
When Your Morning asked Tania how her daughter was reacting to the situation, the B.C. woman said she was “incredible” and had expressed how she didn’t want to go back to the “bad place,” referring to the detention centre.
“But it is definitely surreal having an ankle monitor and your child knows how to put the charging pack on it for you,” Tania said.
Watch the video above for the full interview.
With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Shannon Paterson and CTV National News’ Abigail Bimman
