Man held without identity in Canada for a decade confirmed to be Cameroonian

Canada Border Services Agency officials have at last verified the identity and birthplace of Michael Mvogo, who has been in detention in Canada for more than nine years over immigration violations, according to federal government documents obtained by the Star.

The CBSA has a notarized copy of his birth certificate as well as a video and a written statement that establish Mvogo’s identity and birthplace in Cameroon, according to the internal CBSA report.

Those documents and the video eliminate the last obstacle facing the CBSA in its attempt to remove Mvogo from Canada. Mvogo, who had originally been picked up in Toronto, is supposed to finally be deported on or by Aug. 24, according to a Star source.

Ntaribo Ashu Agborngah, press secretary for the Cameroon High Commission, would not confirm or deny that travel documents had been issued for Mvogo, saying only: “We’ve already resolved the matter with CBSA so if you contact them they’ll give you the details. Every matter has been resolved with CBSA.”

The CBSA would not confirm or deny whether travel documents had been issued for Mvogo and whether he would be sent back to Cameroon within the next few days.

According to Antonella DiGirolamo, a spokesperson for the CBSA, it is not the agency’s policy to confirm or deny the removal of any individual from Canada. However, she did add: “We can tell you that through sustained efforts, the CBSA has confirmed Mr. Michael Mvogo’s country of origin is Cameroon.”

Mvogo first made his real identity known to the CBSA in 2010, but Cameroon refused to believe him and refused to issue travel documents for him for Cameroon.

Last year, a United Nations human rights monitoring body issued a report condemning Canada for detaining Mvogo for so long and urged that he be immediately released.

Mvogo arrived in Canada in 2005 on a fraudulent American passport under the name of Andrea Jerome Walker, the Star previously reported. He was convicted in 2006 in Toronto for carrying a small amount of crack cocaine after being picked up at a homeless shelter.

Numerous attempts have been made to remove him to the United States, Haiti and Guinea. All failed. The Canadian government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars looking after him while he has been in detention. Estimates put the cost of his detention alone at more than $600,000, a source told the Star.

Over the years, Mvogo has given several false identities and nationalities, and that has been one of the problems for the CBSA since without a correct identity or nationality he could not be deported.

According to the internal report, a CBSA liaison officer from Accra, Ghana travelled to Cameroon in March 2015 to talk to police, airlines, document screeners and customs and border officials about Canadian travel documents.

The officer also spent three days in rural Cameroon trying to track down any proof or documents that would confirm Mvogo’s identity.

The mission was successful, according to the report: “Three days of research in rural Cameroon led to the discovery of the birth certificate needed to prove the identity/Cameroonian citizenship of a long-term detention removal case (Mvogo, Michael b. 1959).”

During the time in Cameroon, the CBSA official travelled to the town of Mvengue to the birth registry office to obtain a copy of Mvogo’s birth certificate; the family home in Ka’an, Nyamfendé to look for church baptismal records and Kribi, where Mvogo is said to have gone to high school.

According to the report, the officer’s first stop was the hamlet of Ebom where the CBSA liaison officer hoped locals would be able to help him locate Mvogo’s uncle, Gilbert Mvondo. The officer was directed to the village of Ka’an, four kilometres north. When the officer arrived, he was out planting in the family’s plot of land.

“Upon his return, ‘Uncle’ Gilbert Ateba Mvondo confirmed on video and in a written statement that the subject Mvogo, Michael was born in the area in 1959 to his first cousin Mvondo, Bernard,” the report says.

“As the head of the family now Uncle Gilbert Mvondo confirmed that the family would welcome the subject home and that ample family land exists to provide a livelihood,” the report continued. He also confirmed that the subject was baptized at the church in Naymfendé.”

After talking to Mvogo’s uncle, the Canadian official then went to Mvengue to see if he could get a birth certificate, according to the report. A “birth certificate stub” was found and a copy was obtained and notarized by a local official on behalf of the mayor.

“As hope (and light) were fading, the subject’s birth certificate stub was found on the last shelf of the archives,” the report says. “But power was out; a photocopy and letter of attestation were made after . . . (the official) bought fuel for the generator.”

By the time this was done, the official attempted to get to a hotel but roads were blocked and he was forced to sleep in his car, according to the report.

The next day the official attempted to get baptismal and high school records, but failed. According to the report, the baptismal ledgers from 1958 to 1978 were missing. “They had been lost or destroyed years ago according to a church leader,” the report explains.

The local secondary school’s vice-principal told the CBSA the school only keeps records for 10 years “and they would have nothing from 1973 to 1975 when the subject attended what was then called Collège d’enseignment secondaire de Kribi,” the report says.

Mvogo declined a request by the Star to be interviewed.