Transportation not Deportation!

Transportation not Deportation: End Transit Police

Collaboration with Canadian Border Services Agency

When: Sunday December 14th at 4 pm.
Where: Main Street Skytrain Station
This Sunday, at 4pm, community groups are gathering inside Main Street
skytrain station, near the entrance downstairs, to hold a vigil for the
anniversary of Lucia Vega Jiménez’s suicide in Canadian Border Services
Agency (CBSA) custody, and to discuss transit police’s growing involvement
in immigration enforcement.

In total, three hundred and twenty eight people were reported to Canada
Border Services Agency (CBSA) by Transit Police last year, one in five of
whom faced a subsequent immigration investigation. This suggests that the other four were simply racially profiled.

One of these people was Lucia Vega Jiménez, who later committed suicide in a detention center. At the coroner’s inquest into her death, a transit
police officer testified that he turned Lucia over to CBSA, in part,
because Lucia had an accent and that he believed “she wasn’t originally
from Canada.”

“Together, the research shows that the surveillance of public
transportation is well underway, with Transit Police happily collaborating
with the CBSA in order to enforce immigration law,” says Omar Chu, of
Transportation Not Deportation!, a new committee working on combating the growing role of transit police in the deportation of migrants.

Transit Police’s own report similarly notes that “Transit Police
represented a significant proportion of the Police Agency referrals to the
CBSA offices.”

Press release courtesy of No One Is Illegal – Vancouver. Visit the event’s Facebook page: Transportation Not Deportation