A transgender woman who had been detained by immigration in a men-only jail was denied release Wednesday and will be removed from Canada Thursday.

Avery Edison, 25, was held at the Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton for 20 hours. After her story spread online, sparked by her tweeting of her initial detention at Pearson International Airport, she was transferred Tuesday night to the nearby Vanier Centre for Women.

Edison was deemed inadmissible to Canada when she arrived at Pearson on Monday from her native England because she overstayed her visa on a previous visit here. At a closed-door detention hearing Wednesday, Immigration and Refugee Board member Valerie Currie denied Edison’s release because the adjudicator “didn’t believe she was planning to leave and would appear for her flight.”

Edison’s lawyer, Adrienne Smith, was disappointed Currie would not let her client go so she could spend time with her girlfriend of two years in Toronto, Romy Sugden, before she would be put on an Air Transat flight back to London.

“I’m feeling thrilled,” a teary Sugden said outside Vanier, after the hearing. “I don’t want Avery to be detained here for one moment more than necessary.”

If Edison were to fight the inadmissibility order, Smith said, it’s likely her client would continue to be held until an inadmissibility hearing was held and a decision rendered, a process that could take weeks or months.

“This is probably the best option for her,” said Smith. “If we proceeded with the (inadmissibility) hearing, we risked having an exclusion order against her, which would put a one-year bar on her from coming in, and she would need a written authorization from Immigration to return to Canada.”

Edison, who came here in 2010 to study comedy writing at Humber College, left Canada last September, months after her student visa expired. She returned Monday to visit Sugden and had booked a return flight for March 3.

The only time the couple managed to spend together on Edison’s latest trip was a 30-minute visit by Sugden at Maplehurst Tuesday, through a glass barrier.

On Wednesday, corrections staff denied Sugden’s request to see Edison because all visits were fully booked, though Edison did pass a love letter to her through the lawyer.

Smith said border enforcement officials accepted her request to have Edison escorted to the airport Thursday with gay-friendly staff members, and allow her client to bid farewell to her girlfriend in person at Pearson before her departure.

However, Smith said she was disappointed that the Canada Border Services Agency did not make an apology or statement to Edison, who has been legally a woman since 2009, for putting her in a jail for men.

“An apology was not communicated to Avery, the person who deserves an apology,” Smith said.

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Sugden said she has mixed feelings about Edison’s imminent departure — relieved that her detention will be over soon; sad they will be apart again.

“I will just wait for her call that she arrives home safe and sound, then we are going to look at our options to see what we have to do to be together,” Sugden said.