Man Granted Canadian Residency After Years In B.C. Church Wants To Clear Name

VICTORIA — A man who spent more than two years in a British Columbia church to avoid deportation from Canada on alleged terrorism links is asking the Federal Court to clear his name.

 

Jose Figueroa says he will be in court Wednesday in Vancouver seeking to quash a deportation order and an eight-year-old report saying he was inadmissible to Canada due to his past membership in a political organization in El Salvador that was voted into power in 2009.

 

Immigration Minister John McCallum granted a ministerial exemption last December that allowed Figueroa to leave the Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley after more than two years.

 

 

Figueroa spoke today at the University of Victoria where he is studying law, saying he is now a permanent resident but wants the Canada Border Services Agency to erase the report on his inadmissibility and deportation orders.

 

Figueroa says he has never been a terrorist but was a member of a university student union in El Salvador that supported the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which opposed the country's right-wing dictatorship in the 1980s.

 

Figueroa arrived in Canada in 1997 with his wife and claimed refugee status but in 2010, after living in Langley for 13 years and having three Canadian-born children, Canada sought his deportation.