Behind a grey metal door on the arrivals level of Pearson Airport’s terminal 3, a man who had lived in Canada for 16 years was held and deported in secret this week.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) took Prince Debase Betoukoumessou, 52, from his six children and put him on a plane for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Monday evening. But the government agency wouldn’t confirm his deportation had even occurred, citing privacy concerns.

The only reason anyone knows of Betoukoumessou’s fate is because his family called the Star the day before he was sent off to one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Family of Prince Debase Betoukoumessou reacts to their father/husband deportation

“It is not a practice of the CBSA to confirm the enforcement of a removal of any one person,” wrote spokesperson Patrizia Giolti in an email to the Star.

The CBSA waited more than 24 hours after Betoukoumessou’s plane for Congo took off before it would acknowledge that he had been detained by the agency for over three months.

Clayton Ruby, a prominent civil rights lawyer says there is no blanket ban that would prevent the CBSA from releasing immigration and refugee information.

“They misuse the privacy legislation, pretending it doesn’t allow them to tell the people of Canada what they’re doing in the name of the people of Canada,” he said. “But it does.”

Indeed, the CBSA website has dozens of news releases naming people it has arrested and detained.

“The government collects all kinds of information about each of us,” Ruby said. “There should be privacy rights around the dissemination of that.

“But when the state acts to interfere with liberty to imprison someone or prosecute them, our Constitution requires that this be done openly — not in secret,” he said. “Police states do this — we are not supposed to.”

Other law enforcement agencies told the Star they disclose the name, age and municipality of residence of anyone who is charged with a crime.

Only in cases where the person is a minor, or their identity could be used to identify a victim, would their name be withheld.

“We have an obligation to be as transparent an organization as we possibly can,” said OPP spokesperson Sgt. Pierre Chamberland. “When a person is charged, it is public information.”

“As soon as you’re charged with an offence, that’s a matter of public record,” said Toronto Police Services spokesperson David Hopkinson.

Betoukoumessou has never been charged with a crime but was incarcerated for three months and deported from this country after his refugee application was rejected.

“The Privacy Act provides very strict parameters on what the CBSA may/may (sic) say about any one particular file without the written consent of that person,” wrote CBSA spokesperson Pierre Deveau in an email to the Star.

“What we can tell you that the (Immigration and Refugee Board) has deemed Mr. Betoukoumessou inadmissible … and ordered him removed,” Deveau wrote. “The CBSA is committed to enforcing a removal order as soon as possible.”

Sukanya Pillay, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, says there are serious accountability issues at the CBSA.

“When we have life, liberty and security of person rights at stake … any actions taken that affect these rights need to be held to strict accountability standards and there seems to be a gap here,” she said.

In June, Betoumoukessou’s final appeal was rejected by a Federal Court judge, who confirmed an immigration officer’s opinion that he did not face violence or persecution in the DRC.

Betoukoumessou told his family this weekend that he feared he would be killed if he was sent back to the country of his birth.

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He has not been back since he fled in 1997, after having been imprisoned and tortured under the brutal reign of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

Betoukoumessou, who was employed as a driver for a government security service, was forced at gunpoint to participate in a mission to kidnap political opponents, his wife, Thérèse told the Star. Shortly afterward, the service turned around and arrested him.

After he arrived in Canada, immigration officials found him “to have been an accomplice to the abductions of political opponents” and rejected his refugee application.

Canada has a moratorium on deportations to the DRC, but because Betoukoumessou is considered to have been involved in human rights abuses, the ban doesn’t apply to him.

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