Vancouver Transit Cops Scale Back Collaboration with Border Services Following Woman's Death

Up until last week, Metro Vancouver's transit police were part of an agreement that actively encouraged cops to report delinquent transit riders to immigration. But fallout from one Mexican woman's death has pushed the cop shop to rethink its collaboration with Canadian Border Services.

Under a new directive, Transit Police spokesperson Anne Drennan said transit police will no longer detain fare evaders without a warrant. The cops will still be able to contact border services about anyone they suspect of immigration violations, with permission from a supervisor.

The controversial collaboration described in a 2007 "memorandum of understanding" resulted in 328 riders being turned over to border services in 2013. Of those near-daily referrals, one in five cases resulted in an immigration investigation or deportation. Only one percent of the referrals involved an arrest warrant.

Local community groups started agitating about this following the death of Mexican migrant Lucia Vega Jimenez in December 2013. Vega Jimenez took her own life in a Vancouver immigration detention facility after being detained in a Transit Police fare check three weeks earlier. The immigration agency found Vega Jimenez had made a refugee claim three years earlier, but was denied because of discrepancies in her work history. She snuck across the Surrey border in April 2013.

A wilderness of error led to the 42-year-old hotel worker's suicide, a coroner's inquest revealed. The "dungeon-like" airport holding centre was understaffed and lacked training in suicide prevention. While in custody, Vega Jimenez told a nurse she feared domestic violence if she returned to Mexico. A follow-up mental health assessment was canceled because of a clerical mistake. The rent-a-cop who found Vega Jimenez hanging in a shower stall testified that he falsified her room check records.

Meanwhile, transit cop Jason Schuss testified that he called border services on Vega Jimenez in part because of her accent.

"I understood that she had an accent when I spoke with her," he told the jury. "With that, I could tell she wasn't originally from Canada. That's the reason I tried to identify her via CBSA." She also didn't produce a proof of the $2.75 transit fare, and gave officers two different names. Transit cops drove the undocumented woman to the Vancouver airport detention centre where she later died.

"It was horrifying and incredibly tragic," says migrant justice advocate Harsha Walia. Walia is a spokesperson for the group Transportation Not Deportation who has helped uncover details of the CBSA collaboration through freedom of information requests. She says the transit cops' accent profiling amounts to "blatant racism."

In October 2014 the inquest jury made a number of recommendations to improve conditions for immigration detainees—including access to legal counsel and natural light—but did not recommend changes to Transit Police practices. Months of public pressure from groups like Transportation Not Deportation and No One Is Illegal eventually provoked the reform.

The coroner's inquest fueled the outcry. "It was something that was under discussion before the inquest, but it brought things more to a head," Drennan said of the Transit Police decision.

A five-year report on transit enforcement bragged about the agency's undocumented migrant-trawling abilities in 2013. The report says, on average, other BC police agencies like the RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department made 24 CBSA referrals during a three-month period. Transit Police made 117 in the same timeframe.

But that migrant-busting tone has since evaporated from Transit Police communications. Drennan says contact with border services has always been a "last resort" when officers cannot verify the identity of a transit rider.

A CBSA statement says the immigration office still intends to keep lines of communication open. "While we cannot comment on any changes that Transit Police may be making to its internal policies and procedures, CBSA will continue to act on any tips or referrals it receives from any of its enforcement partners," wrote border services spokesperson Stefanie Wudel in an email. "In cases where there is no outstanding warrant, transit police's own internal policy will determine when and if they will make a referral to CBSA."

Under the new rules, transit cops will continue to run fare evaders' names through police databases and arrest anyone with an outstanding warrant. "If there's a warrant on the system we will arrest a person—that hasn't changed," Drennan said.

She says if all other means of identification fail, officers can still reach out to CBSA, but will first require permission from a watch commander. In about 99 percent of past cases, where there was no warrant for arrest, suspects would now be allowed to walk. However, if police reach "a complete dead end" in identifying a fare evader, Drennan says they can arrest for obstruction.

"We also have issued a directive through our members that if a person is a victim or a witness to a crime on transit… We would not ask them what their status is in this country," added Drennan. "We wouldn't ask them their status because we feel everybody regardless of situation deserves the protection of police."

Transit Police say these changes represent a step toward "sanctuary city" policies in Toronto and Hamilton, which allow undocumented residents to access city services without needing to provide identification. Walia says there's still work to be done. She questions what forms of ID are "acceptable" when riding a bus or train. "You don't need a passport to write a ticket out to somebody," she says.

Transit police have pledged that they'll look into defining "an acceptable range of identification documents."

Vancouver may not be a "sanctuary city" yet but Vega Jimenez's lasting legacy is that other migrants riding the transit system won't be subjected to the same overextended authority she endured before her death.

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