“Let Beverley stay!”

The chant rang out over a symphony of car horns Tuesday morning in the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Sts. as Black Lives Matter Toronto held court to protest the impending deportation of a Jamaican woman who recently gave birth to her new son.

At 8:07 a.m., organizers strode into the intersection holding signs and megaphones, and joined hands to keep traffic at bay. In the middle of their circle, where the roads converged, a small table was set up, containing protest representatives, Beverley Braham, her husband and her son.

Braham, who is married to a Canadian and now has a Canadian child, balanced her newborn son on her lap as she spoke to press.

“All I ask is to stay with my family,” she said.

Braham was first threatened with deportation in March, when she was 31-weeks pregnant. She was given an extension of three months so that she could have her child, but now Canada Border Services Agency has told her that she must be back in Jamaica by Sept. 21.

“For Black Lives Matter, we are in support of black families, and we believe that black immigrant lives matter,” said Syrus Marcus Ware, a member of Black Lives Matter Toronto. “We’re here today to demand that Beverley Braham be allowed to stay in Canada. She is going through her 12-month sponsorship and it’s not yet up; it’s unjust that they’re deporting her at this point.”

Despite the continuing blare of honks threatening to drown her out, Braham detailed how she was locked in a detention centre for three days, starting on Sept. 6.

“They refused to let me see my child. They took away my baby from me and they tell me I have to leave,” she said. “In detention, they didn’t have any food to give me for my child . . . (and) they refused to give me my baby stuff because (the detention officer) told me that I am under arrest. I’ve never ever breached any of the conditions that was given to me; I’ve always complied. The only thing I did wrong was I overstayed my time.”

She said that, after she went to the courts on Sept. 8, she was released by the judge as she hadn’t breached her conditions. Mina Ramos, a member with End Immigration Detention Network, called the situation “ridiculous.”

“A sponsorship application is supposed to take a max of 12 months. Her application has already been for 11 months. She needs to be able to stay until that process is heard,” Ramos said. “People cannot be held in immigration detention. They should not have to choose between their families and being deported to a country where they have not been for years. We demand that she stay, that her sponsorship application be heard, and that she not be held in detention during this process.”

The protest went on for just under 20 minutes. By 8:23, the table was packed up, and traffic was let through at 8:25. A representative with Black Lives Matter Toronto said that police had been notified the night before that the protest would be happening. There was no visible police presence during the 20 minutes that Black Lives Matter Toronto held the intersection, but officers were seen speaking to organizers shortly after they let the traffic move back through.

“This process of breaking up black families has been happening since slave labour camps, when they sold members of our family up and down the river,” said Ware. “This is no different. They’re separating a mother from her family, from her child. This is completely unacceptable.”

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“She is not the only one who has been separated from her family because of immigration detention. Two hundred and forty-one kids have been held in immigration detention from 2011 to 2015,” Ramos added. “This happens all the time.”

Black Lives Matter Toronto is hoping that a public outcry will help stop Braham from being deported. Braham said she is also suffering from medical issues and has a blood clot in her lungs. Faced with the choice of taking her son with her to Jamaica and separating him from his father, or going alone and having to leave her entire family behind, Braham is lost.

“Canada is about family,” she said. “So why do you want to separate us?”