© Aaron Lynett/National Post Canadian customs on the Peace Bridge, which spans the Niagara River and connects Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario.

Sabina Shahrin Nipa made a lot of mistakes after she came to Canada six years ago. She used a fake name when she applied for refugee status. She submitted false documents to immigration officials. She gave testimony the Immigration and Refugee Board found “vague and misleading” and her application for refugee status was rejected, in part, because she “deliberately attempted to deceive” the board.

But on Monday, Nipa will not be deported from Canada. Instead, barring a last-minute stay in federal court, her children will.

Redwan and Shuruvi Mozumder, 19 and 18 years old respectively, have lived in Toronto since they were tweens. They are, in many ways, quintessential Toronto kids. Shuruvi was supposed to start at the University of Toronto this fall. Redwan works for the city, taking care of children in an after-school program. But unless their lawyer convinces a judge to halt the process Friday, on Monday, the two will be escorted to the Canadian border, escorted into Buffalo, New York, and forced to remake their lives in a country where they have no connections, no family, and no meaningful ties.

“The kids really are innocent bystanders in all of this,” said their lawyer, Richard Wazana.

It’s a situation that is both prosaic in Canada — refugee claims get rejected all the time, and people, normal people, get deported every day — and also very different. The person accused of the wrongdoing in this case is Nipa, the mother. But she won’t be deported, not yet. And if she ever is, it will likely be to Bangladesh, not the United States.

“I would say the mother’s immigration history is likely not doing the kids any favours,” Wazana said. “Perhaps if her immigration history had been a bit more honest, (the Canadian Border Services Agency) wouldn’t have been in such a rush to deport these kids literally weeks after the youngest one turned 18.”

The Nipa/Mozumder case is awash in tangles, confusions, deceptions and delays. In an application for permanent residency on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, an application that’s still pending, Nipa claimed that when she filed her first refugee claim, the one with the false name, she was doing so on the advice of an immigration consultant she thought was a lawyer.

Nipa told the board her troubles started in her home country of Bangladesh after she met and fell in love with a man her family disapproved of. The two were married in a traditional ceremony that was never registered and, after the birth of their first son, they were harassed by both her family and the larger community.

Eventually, to escape the situation, Nipa agreed to a green card marriage with a man in the United States. When that man discovered she was already married and pregnant with someone else’s child he began “abusing and terrorizing her,” according to her application. Nipa fled back to Bangladesh, then returned again to the United States to give birth to Shuruvi in 2001 before returning again to Bangladesh where the family lived until 2013.

That year, the family came to Canada where Nipa, Redwan and Shuruvi applied for refugee status. That application, and an appeal, were rejected, largely because the adjudicators felt the entire family could simply move to the United States, where Shuruvi and Redwan were citizens and Nipa had a green card. (Wazana believes that green card has long ago lapsed.)

But for years after that decision, nothing happened. The kids settled in. “When we came here, we didn’t understand the culture,” said Redwan. “We were like pure-bred Bengalis.” But soon they adapted and Canada began to feel like home. “If somebody were to ask me ‘what are you?’ I would just say ‘Canadian,’” Redwan said.

Last spring, Shuruvi graduated from East York Secondary School. She was accepted into the life sciences program at the University of Toronto and offered membership at the school’s prestigious University College. She planned to start the program next fall. But on Nov. 1, two weeks after her 18th birthday, CBSA ordered the children to appear for their own deportation on Dec. 9. Now, she isn’t sure what she’s going to do. “I had my whole future planned out,” she said. “I was so sure this was going to be my lifestyle forever.”

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Beaches-East York, where the family lives, called the decision to deport the kids to the U.S. “unfair” in a letter he sent to the court.

“First, they do not have any meaningful connection to the United States, the country of their birth. They have not lived there since they were babies,” he wrote. “Second, deporting the children to the United States will tear the family apart.”

Erskine-Smith wants the deportation halted at least until Nipa’s situation is cleared up and all three members of the family can either stay here or be sent to the same country.

“It’s a hard case not to feel for,” he said, in an interview. “It makes no sense that you have kids who are, through no fault of their own, going to be sent to a country that they have less connection to than Canada.”

If they do get deported Monday, Redwan and Shuruvi say they’ll first try to find somewhere to live, and then jobs. Once they’re settled, they’ll both try to find a way to get back into school.

Wazana doesn’t think it’s likely their mother will ever be deported back to Bangladesh, though it’s far from impossible. And if Redwan and Shuruvi are forced to leave Canada, the odds are slim they’ll ever be permitted to come back, he believes. He wants the deportation stayed at least until the humanitarian and compassionate application is assessed.

“Decisions by the CBSA like this really bother me,” he said. “And I think they should bother the Canadian public as well. I think we should all be troubled that the CBSA continues on a regular basis to separate families.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the CBSA said the privacy act prevented the agency from commenting on this case specifically.

“However, we can tell you that the decision to remove someone from Canada is not taken lightly,” Ashley Lemire, a media relations Manager at CBSA, wrote in an email. “The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act states that removal orders must be enforced as soon as possible. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is firmly committed to doing so.”

• Email: rwarnica@postmedia.com Twitter: jesse_snyder

Listen to our news podcast, 10/3, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify