Facing life in prison in Canada: refugee aid worker with church connections was helping Haitians

The day after Janet Hinshaw-Thomas posted bail in a Canadian court in late September, she made a hastily arranged trip to New York City. She faced--and continues to face--a potential life sentence for violating Canada's immigration law by transporting 12 Haitian refugees from the United States to a border station in Quebec. With legal proceedings looming, she journeyed to New York to visit her uncle, Cardinal Avery Dulles.

Meeting with Hinshaw-Thomas at Fordham University, Cardinal Dulles, a Jesuit theologian elevated to his current post by Pope John Paul II, offered his assistance on the spot. "I told her I'd be very glad to serve as a character witness if the case goes to trial," he said in an interview with NCR. "I think she's been doing wonderful work over the years, taking care of refugees and helping people get asylum. I hope the charges will be dropped."

Many Haitians face a serious risk of deportation if they remain in the United States--despite the violence and civil disorder plaguing Haiti. They have a strong chance of attaining asylum in Canada.

Shortly after his niece's visit, Dulles mentioned the case in a letter to the Jesuit Refugee Service in Washington, which is looking into it, according to a staff member at the organization. In the words of Eric Sutton, Hinshaw-Thomas' attorney in Montreal, Dulles "is giving her all the support he can."

Though the extent of the cardinal's influence on the case is difficult to decipher, his support will be added to that of Catholic groups in Canada that have rallied behind Hinshaw-Thomas.

The Jesuit Refugee and Migrant Service, the Washington group's Canadian partner, spoke out for Hinshaw-Thomas and made a substantial contribution to her defense fund: "We find [the pending prosecution] so outrageous that we're supporting all efforts to get it stopped," said Jesuit Fr. Jack Costello, the service's director.

Meanwhile, several other Catholic organizations, some of which are affiliated with the Canadian Council for Refugees, took similarly strong positions.

Refugee groups in Canada almost certainly would have intervened without the church connection, given the controversial nature of the applicable Canadian law, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, which created pressure for strict border-protection measures in the United States and Canada, the act makes it a crime to organize or assist people entering the country without proper passports or visas. During a critical parliamentary debate on what would later become the law, Elinor Caplan, then minister of citizenship and immigration, stated in response to opposition concerns, "When it can be proven that someone assisted for humanitarian reasons, such as people fleeing persecution, the minister of justice [will] not prosecute." She then said she was referring to cases that often involve "church groups and organizations that help people."

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Hinshaw-Thomas, who told The New York Times that for her September mission she collected just $250 per family to defray travel expenses, appears to fit into Caplan's exception. She drove the 12 Haitians to the border so that they could present their asylum claims to Canadian authorities, and she did so through PRIME-Ecumenical Commitment to Refugees, the Pennsylvania-based refugee resettlement group she founded two decades ago.

Nonetheless, Canadian authorities charged Hinshaw-Thomas with an indictable offense, the equivalent of a felony in the United States, for violating the act.

"The law has been grossly misapplied," said Sutton. "It's intended for traffickers and human smugglers who transport people for profit. But this woman has no money. If there's any notion on the prosecutorial side that she's making a profit from this, that's completely wrong."

Mary Jo Leddy, director of Romero House, an Ontario community that welcomes refugees when they arrive in Canada, warned that the prosecution of Hinshaw-Thomas could affect countless humanitarian workers and volunteers. "The wider implication is that this can apply to anyone who helps people make a refugee claim if they don't have their papers in order, which they usually don't," she said.

As her group had done numerous times without incident, Hinshaw-Thomas contacted Canadian authorities by e-mail five days before arriving at the border, according to her statements to the Times. This trip, however, occurring amid a month long influx of people seeking asylum in Canada, ended quite differently from the others--with the 65-year-old aid worker staring at the possibility of a life behind bars:

Though Hinshaw-Thomas gave several interviews immediately following her arrest, Sutton has now advised her to avoid speaking to the media. She will return to court in Quebec Nov. 30, at which point she will likely receive a date for a preliminary hearing.

[Patrick Mulvaney is a freelance journalist and a law student at the University of Pennsylvania.]

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