TORONTO

They operate as a world unto their own, travelling the world for sanctuary, but for at least three members of the Lev Tahor ultra orthodox Jewish sect, Canada will harbour them no more.

While their friends were in a Chatham court, fighting to get back some of their children seized over allegations of child abuse, three others appeared at a detention review in Toronto Friday where the Immigration and Refugee Board ordered them held in custody until they can be deported back to Israel.

Lev Tahor (which means pure heart) give true meaning to the adage about wandering Jews.

Founded in Israel by charismatic Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, the extremist community is shunned by mainstream Judaism for its anti-Zionism (they believe the state of Israel can’t exist until the Messiah comes) and harsh interpretation of the Torah.

Its members moved with their leader to Brooklyn where Helbrans was convicted of kidnapping in 1994 after one of his students, a secular 13-year-old boy, disappeared for two years after the rabbi refused to return him to his mother, “the devil.”

Released on parole after serving two years, Helbrans was deported to Israel in 2000 but soon took his followers back across the world, this time to Ste. Agathe, Que.

They lived quietly in the small Laurentian town, their community easily identifiable by the women dressed head to toe in black with only their faces and hands showing and the men with long sideburns and shaved heads. But they fled in the middle of the night last November amid a child-welfare investigation involving allegations of abuse and neglect, including forced marriages of girls as young as 14.

The sect has repeatedly denied the allegations.

They set up camp near Chatham. But when Ontario child welfare moved in to enforce the Quebec order to seize 14 children deemed in need of protection, some of the families fled again, this time to Trinidad and Guatemala.

All but six of the children have been returned to Canada where their fate will be decided by an Ontario judge next week.

Unrelated to the custody case, Canada border security agents raided their Chatham compound Wednesday and arrested six Lev Tahor members without legal status to be here. The three Israeli citizens remaining in custody had all been issued deportation orders in the past and had resolutely ignored them. Border security was just catching up to them now.

So it was hardly surprising that after hearing their cases, IRB member Andrew Laut refused a request by lawyer Guidy Mamann to release them pending their removal from Canada — he saw nothing to suggest they would now show up as required.

From the hearing it was clear that Lev Tahor may be an insular sect but they certainly know their way around the ever lenient Canadian immigration system.

Avraham Kabaz Kashani, 39, was ordered out of Canada in July 2007 after exhausting years of appeals, including a failed refugee bid. The father of 10 children didn’t report for his removal and remained here illegally until this week’s arrest seven years later.

“I didn’t run, I didn’t hide. I stayed in the same house. I didn’t change my name. We said if they want to take us, they will take us,” he told the hearing.

Unconvinced he’d suddenly now obey a directive and show up at the airport, Laut ordered him held in custody until his passport is retrieved and he’s put on a plane for Israel.

Odel Malka, covered in a black robe resembling a burka, was also told she must remain in detention. The 30-year-old failed refugee claimant and mother of nine was first ordered to leave in 2002, but didn’t board her plane until March 2012. Ten months later, Malka had slipped back in, claiming now that she used a passport bearing a different name, though it has no entry stamp and there’s no record of her crossing the border. “She did not have consent to return to Canada,” Laut said.

Malka still has one avenue of appeal.

A 19-year-old man and already the father of three, was also detained and given a removal date of April 10. He can still apply for a stay.

But the writing’s on the wall. Canada is no longer a haven for Lev Tahor. The question is where the group will turn up next.