An immigration case that involves a Vaughan man deported to Italy in 2010 after he was deemed inadmissible to Canada on the grounds of “serious criminality” and “organized criminality” is causing a dispute between the federal Liberal government and members of the party’s old guard.

At the centre of the fight is Carlo Figliomeni, 50, who was convicted of weapons possession in Italy in 1989 and of having ties to the Mafia a few years later. He was subsequently exonerated of the Mafia association charge by an Italian court.

In late 2016, after an assessment of the case, then immigration minister John McCallum issued instructions to the visa office in Rome to grant Figliomeni an authorization to return to Canada and a temporary resident permit to reunite with his Canadian wife and two children in Vaughan.

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However, two months after Ahmed Hussen took over the Immigration Department in 2017 when McCallum was appointed the ambassador to China, the offer was rescinded. The family’s MP Francesco Sorbara, a Liberal, along with two former Liberal MPs, John Nunziata and Jim Karygiannis, are lobbying the Trudeau government to let Figliomeni back into the country.

Sorbara, who represents Vaughan-Woodbridge, has been assisting the family and wrote to Hussen in support of Figliomeni’s reunification with his family.

“I fully believe that the family’s and most predominantly, the children’s well-being should be of paramount concern and as such reunification should be completed promptly,” wrote Sorbara, who declined to be interviewed.

“Mr. Figliomeni lived in Canada for nearly 20 years and during this entire period was neither a suspect nor charged with any criminal activities in Canada. In this 20-year period, Mr. Figliomeni never had any interactions with police services or the courts. According to former employers, neighbours and community members, his entire time in Canada was spent as a model citizen.”

According to the records from the admissibility proceedings, Figliomeni arrived Canada in January 1988 as a permanent resident. During a visit to his mother in Calabria the following year, he was arrested and convicted of illegal weapons possession. He served a two-year, two-month house arrest sentence and was fined one million lire — roughly $850 then — before he returned to Canada in 1991.

In 1993, upon his arrival in Italy on another trip, he had his passport seized and was later charged with association with the Mafia’s Siderno clan, according to the admissibility records. The records also say that in 1997 an Italian court found Figliomeni was “fully absolved of the fact and the deed of any and all connection with organized crime.” He presented the immigration tribunal with a copy of a cheque from the Italian Treasury in the amount of 140,000 lire — about $115 then — that he claimed was compensation for four years of wrongful detention.

During the admissibility hearing in Canada in 2010, the tribunal found that Figliomeni was a low-ranking member of an international organized crime group, even after hearing that the Italian conviction of Mafia association had been overturned.

Tribunal adjudicator Mary Heyes accepted the testimony of Det.-Const. Alan Cooke of York Regional Police, who testified that Figliomeni’s group was involved in a bloody feud alongside members of the Commisso crime family against members of the Costa crime family in the late 1980s and early 1990s in southern Italy and Canada.

Cooke testified that the crime group’s leadership includes cousins of Figliomeni and that one of his relatives, Riccardo Rumbo, was convicted of fatally shooting newly-arrived Italian immigrant Giovanni Costa outside his Thornhill home in 1991.

“Detective Cooke testified that the Figliomeni crime group has been involved in such criminal activities as money laundering, drug trafficking, importing and exporting drugs as well as stock fraud,” Heyes wrote in her March 31, 2010 decision.

Heyes acknowledged that Figliomeni does not have a criminal record in Canada. She also noted that the Italian Court of Appeal found he and his cousin, Tito Figliomeni, guilty of illegal possession of weapons, including military-grade assault rifles and stolen shotguns.

“I do not find counsel’s suggestion that these guns would be used simply for hunting to be plausible,” Heyes wrote. “The guns were found concealed in a hayloft and included stolen shotguns and shotguns that had been defaced or altered by having their registration numbers erased.”

Heyes wrote that she considered the testimony of Cooke more credible than that of Figliomeni, who told the hearing: “I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“They said that they found weapons, and I have never seen those weapons,” Figliomeni testified before his deportation, according to the tribunal ruling. “But they put those arms on to me, this is the story, and maybe at that period there was things happening in the country, in that land, and they couldn’t arrest anybody. Then they took us — they took me, and they made in such a way that we had the charge because somebody has to pay for it.

He accused Italian police of planting, falsifying and misrepresenting evidence.

“They also made the fingerprints,” he told the immigration hearing.

“Did you ever ask how that rocket launcher got in to your father’s house?” an immigration officer asked him.

“I don’t recollect, no,” Figliomeni said.

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He described a gun that police called a rocket launcher as simply a signal pistol or flare gun, which is used in Italy to celebrate events such as New Year’s Eve.

He testified that any contact that he may have had with alleged crime family members at social events in Canada does not mean that he is a member of an organized crime group.

Heyes noted that Cooke wrote in his notes after a meeting with Figliomeni in 2005: “Says he was a member of the Figliomeni Crime Group/Siderno Crime Group but he was very young at the time. When you’re told to hide weapons or something else you do it. If you’re in the family, you’re in the group (Crime Group).”

In an interview, Figliomeni’s wife Marisa Ferrigno said her husband was always up front with Canadian border officials about those charges when he was asked why he had been away from Canada for such a lengthy time. He returned to Canada in 1999 and applied for Canadian citizenship in 2003, when immigration officials took a close look at his criminal records in Italy. In 2008, Canada Border Services Agency initiated the admissibility proceedings against him.

Both Karygiannis and Nunziata are critical of the Liberal government’s flip-flop regarding Figliomeni.

“Even hypothetically, he is guilty, he has served his time and it’s up to this minister to step forward and say ‘yes.’ McCallum signed this off before he left. When this minister took over, things just hit the wall,” said Karygiannis, who left federal politics in 2014 and is now a Toronto city councillor.

Nunziata agrees.

“I have to be harsh on the (current) immigration minister. On Valentine’s Day, he made an announcement about the spousal sponsorship program. He said spousal reunification was the human thing to do. He said he wanted to make sure families are not unnecessarily kept apart,” said Nunziata, who served three terms as a Liberal MP until 1997 in the York South-Weston riding that Hussen holds now. He became an independent MP after he was kicked out of the party for voting against a Liberal budget.

“Give me a break. Hussen is totally familiar with this case, but for some inexplicable reason when he became the minister, he rescinded the decision made by a true Liberal, McCallum.”

Immigration Department spokesperson Shannon Ker confirmed McCallum’s signed instructions authorizing Figliomeni’s temporary resident permit had been rescinded after “further review and further consultations” by Hussen. A new application will be decided by an officer in due course.

“The Government of Canada continues to take appropriate steps to protect the public safety and security of Canadians and to uphold the integrity of Canada’s immigration system,” said Ker in an email.

“The temporary resident permit is always issued at the discretion of the delegated authority and may be cancelled at any time.”

Ferrigno, an elementary school teacher, said she and her two kids moved back to Italy to be with Figliomeni after his 2010 deportation, but the three of them had to return to Canada because she was unable to find a job and her children had trouble adjusting.

She said the legal battle to keep her husband in Canada and the travels to Italy to visit him have exhausted the family’s financial resources, forcing them to sell their house and move in with her family.

“It’s been a nightmare. I’ve lost my husband. My family has been destroyed. There’s no more peace and sanity. Everything has been taken away,” said Ferrigno, 42.

The family has also written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for help, but his office said it could not intervene because the immigration and refugee system is “independent and free of political interference.”