Student Environmental Activist Fears Canada Seeks to Deport Him

Zain Haq, Pakistani co-founder of the group Save Old Growth, has gone into hiding.

The lawyers he consulted advised Zain Haq "that I should pack light and be prepared to travel.”Ian Harland

This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

An international student leading a controversial civil resistance campaign to end old-growth logging in B.C. is fearful the Canada Border Services Agency is looking to deport him.

Zain Haq, a co-founder of the Save Old Growth protest group behind a recent series of highway blockades across the province, has been ordered to show up at a CBSA office.

The third-year history major at Simon Fraser University who hails from Pakistan is in Canada on a study permit, a document issued by Immigration Canada.

The 21-year-old activist has gone into hiding after talking to a number of lawyers who advised him it’s likely CBSA wants to detain him. He has yet to find a lawyer who will represent him. “Basically, what all of them suggested to me was that I should pack light and be prepared to travel,” Haq told Canada’s National Observer on Thursday.

Ultimately, Haq is worried CBSA intends to deport him because of his activist work. “It’s my suspicion and other people’s suspicion that it’s due to political reasons,” he said. “I’m feeling very anxious because it’s very rapid. It’s a lot to actually process and work with.”

Some conditions for obtaining a study permit include obeying the law and the absence of a criminal record. The SFU student has been arrested 10 times for acts of civil resistance at various climate-related protests since 2020. And on Feb. 15, he was sentenced to two weeks in jail for criminal contempt of court after violating an injunction involving the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX).

He was also fined $1,500 in B.C.’s Provincial Court for his involvement in an Extinction Rebellion protest against TMX on Nov. 27 that blocked a Canadian National Railway line in Burnaby. And he’s currently facing five charges of mischief, he said.

But despite being locked up for contempt of court, Haq doesn’t believe it technically results in a criminal record.

CBSA officers visited his apartment twice early this week when he wasn’t there, Haq said. In the first instance on Monday, CBSA officers left a letter for him with his roommate ordering Haq to attend the border agency offices the next morning or risk arrest. They returned again the following day.

Haq said he didn’t see the letter until the morning in question and had no time to respond or seek legal advice. The threatening letter did not provide any information about why he was being told to attend the border agency.

The CBSA summons occurred the same day Save Old Growth launched its recent campaign pledging a rash of road blockades in June. There’d been no prior phone calls or letters before agents suddenly knocked on his door, he added.

Haq will try to avoid contact with CBSA until he can finish preparing along with SOG organizers for his possible deportation. But he also intends to present himself to the border agency once he’s obtained legal counsel. “Because I’m one of the central co-ordinators, this is a really bad time for this to happen,” he said. “It’s really important that our mobilization doesn’t collapse.

“So, I’m just trying right now to figure out what the plan is for me potentially not being in the city.”

CBSA can’t provide information on specific cases generally considered protected under the Privacy Act, senior spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in an email to Canada’s National Observer. However, the agency has a legal obligation to remove all foreign nationals and permanent residents who violate the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA)Purdy wrote.

But before taking any enforcement action, CBSA reviews all relevant factors related to a case in tandem with IRPA violations outlined in sections 34 to 42, she said, noting cases that involve safety and security issues are prioritized.

“Serious inadmissibility cases (those involving criminality, national security, war crimes, humans rights violations and organized crime) are a top priority for the CBSA,” she added.

All individuals who are subject to enforcement action by the CBSA have access to due process and procedural fairness,” she said. “Those being removed have either exhausted, or chosen not to pursue further legal recourse and have no legal right to remain in Canada.”

But Haq questions whether his activities to emphasize the gravity of the climate catastrophe should be deemed illegal while governments’ failure to act in the global emergency is not. “Our framing is that the illegal activities are being conducted by the government, and we’re trying to do something about it.”

He acknowledged there’s a measure of risk for anyone who takes part in civil disobedience movements. “Other people stopped caring about their status, their jobs and their careers to enter resistance and risk arrest,” Haq said.

“Putting ourselves in harm’s way is how we maximize the likelihood of success,” he added, adding SOG’s fearlessness has made it possible to attract and mobilize a large number of people.

The dangers of the accelerating climate crisis are greater than any individual personal risk, he said. “We’re faced with mass starvation and extreme likelihood of societal collapse over the next few years.”

The 21-year-old activist said he could face political persecution if he is indeed deported back to Pakistan. “It’s very likely because I’ll obviously be engaging in similar activities if I go back, and that could obviously lead to my imprisonment, or worse,” Haq said. “Whether I’m in Canada or back home, I think political persecution is going to be common if you’re going to be on the right side of history.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate