Fact Check: Not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner’ A member of Pierre Poilievre’s extended family has crossed through Roxham Road illegally to seek asylum in Canada from Venezuela.  Anaida Poilievre’s uncle, José Gerardo Galindo Prato, is the third from the right in the front row at the Conservative Party convention in Quebec City, September 9, 2023. The hypocrisy is overwhelming when you consider Poilievre’s stance on illegal border crossers and his blame of the liberal government. I am glad that he is here safe and sound. But what makes him special is that he’s able to live here in Canada undocumented with a deportation order and his name until Anaida Poilievre and an undisclosed MP’s office in 2021 and his efforts to get permanent residency. Article by The Breach In late July 2018, Pierre Poilievre took aim at “illegal border crossers.” “How much will it cost to house the illegal border crossers in hotels in the coming year?” he repeatedly asked during a parliamentary committee hearing, criticizing the Liberal government for helping shelter thousands of asylum seekers who had entered the country through Roxham Road in Quebec. “Who will pay for it?” Two months later, the Conservative leader’s own uncle-in-law crossed Roxham Road on foot. After failing to get his refugee claim approved, he appears to have lived undocumented in Canada with a deportation order in his name. According to documents obtained by The Breach, Poilievre’s relative—the uncle of his wife, Anaida Poilievre—received help from her and an undisclosed MP’s office in 2021 in his efforts to get permanent residency. He has since been seen attending Conservative events, as recently as 2023, according to photos examined by The Breach. Poilievre has said a Conservative government would “have the resources” to “track down” such individuals and deport them. “These are people who are not eligible to be here and we will find them and we will deport them,” Poilievre told a Montreal radio station in December. The Conservative leader has taken an increasingly hard line on asylum seekers entering Canada, calling to shut down Roxham Road, where tens of thousands crossed in recent years fleeing hardship or persecution. At his election campaign launch on Sunday, Poilievre said he would put a hard cap on immigration and take other measures. “We will keep out and deport criminals, stop fraud and crack down on bogus refugee claims,” he said. “On immigration, like everything else, we will put Canada First.” Refugee advocacy organizations say his position appears to be “his family first.” “It is deeply hypocritical that Poilievre has vilified migrants, blamed them for the housing and affordability crisis, and said he wants to deport undocumented people who are in the same situation his own family seemed to be in,” said Syed Hussan, the executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change. “If Poilievre’s family deserves to make a life here, so does everybody else’s.”‘Shut off the flow of false refugee claims’: Poilievre Anaida Poilievre’s uncle, Venezuelan lawyer José Gerardo Galindo Prato, had previously entered Canada in 2004 and lived without documentation until 2007, when he was deported by Canadian border agents. Back in Venezuela, Galindo Prato was convicted in 2017 of helping a drug trafficker escape from prison and served six months in prison, which he says was a trumped-up, false charge. In the fall of 2018, he flew to Miami, then to Pittsburgh, and later crossed at Roxham Road. The Breach obtained a draft copy of Galindo Prato’s written submission to Immigration Canada from early 2021, applying to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, which Anaida Poilievre helped him prepare. At this stage of the asylum process, he would have already failed his refugee application and been served with a deportation order, according to an immigration lawyer The Breach consulted. According to email and Facebook correspondence seen by The Breach, Anaida Poilievre organized the drafting and mailing of the submission with assistance from a parliamentarian. In one message she wrote that she had a “person helping in a MP’s office.” In another, she was even more direct. “I’m trying to help my uncle,” she wrote, and “the MP can help us.” At the time, she worked as an executive assistant in the office of Conservative MP Michael Cooper, a close ally of Pierre Poilievre. Since Poilievre became leader, she has taken an active leadership role herself, narrating ads, introducing her husband at major events, and playing a key role in fundraising for the party. The revelations about an undocumented family member raise questions about whether Pierre Poilievre was in any way involved in advocating for his uncle-in-law to stay in the country, despite his outspoken rhetoric against “illegal border crossers.” In December 2024, Poilievre called for Canada to bulk up the security at the border, including by deputizing provincial police and cracking down on “false refugee claims.” “We need to shut off the flow of false refugee claims who are in no danger in their country of origin but who are sneaking in either through our porous border, through our weak visa system, and then when they’re here, making a false claim,” he said. Galindo Prato’s written submission, which the immigration lawyer verified looks like a typical example, says he was persecuted and jailed without trial in Venezuela. But online court documents from the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice indicate he was charged with helping a drug trafficker escape from prison while he served as a legal consultant in a psychiatric clinic. Because refugee and immigration proceedings are highly confidential, The Breach could not confirm whether Galindo Prato has received his permanent residency. But The Breach was able to identify Galindo Prato sitting with the rest of Anaida Poilievre’s family in the front row at the Conservative Party convention in Quebec City in August 2023. “I love real refugees,” Poilievre said in December. “Our country was built in large part by real refugees who were genuinely fleeing danger, like my wife. But I have no time for people who lie to come into our country, and that is the problem we have to cut off.”‘Not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner’ Refugees who try to enter Canada at official border crossings are turned back, because of an agreement with the United States that suggests they are safe in Canada’s southern neighbour. So thousands of people like Galindo Prato have crossed into the country at unofficial entry points like Roxham Road, after which they are able to make a claim for asylum. There is no guarantee that they will be able to stay—tens of thousands of refugees have been deported by the Liberal government in recent years. Migrant Workers Alliance for Change executive director Hussan said that humanitarian and compassionate grounds are the last resort for denied refugee claimants like Galindo Prato and are granted on the basis of strong community ties. “But not every migrant has a politician like Poilievre in their corner,” he said. “We think every asylum seeker, refugee, migrant, and undocumented person should have permanent resident status in order to ensure equal rights. What Poilievre is proposing is instead to deport and destroy the lives of vast numbers of people—except those he knows.” Hussan’s organization is part of a coalition of groups in the Migrant Rights Network that have spent years advocating for the government to grant status to undocumented people in Canada, who number anywhere between 300,000 and 600,000. The Liberals had pledged in late 2021 to “explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities.” But in the wake of increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric and the Conservative Party’s surge in the polls, the government backtracked on their promise for a “broad and comprehensive program.” By contrast, Poilievre has promised to more vigorously pursue deportations, especially of people—just like his uncle-in-law—who have had their initial refugee claims rejected. “We know that there are 30,000 people who’ve been ordered deported that have not left,” Poilievre said in December. “Trudeau has lost control of immigration. I will take back control. First of all, we will track down the 30,000 people who’ve been ordered deported, and I will have them deported from this country.” Two years ago, Poilievre described the Roxham Road crossing as one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s great failures. “Nowhere is that chaos more evident then at Roxham road where Trudeau encouraged people to cross illegally into Canada,” Poilievere said. “We need more immigrants but we need to have it done in an orderly and lawful fashion.” In 2023, the Liberal government closed Roxham Road permanently. Poilievre has increasingly blamed Canada’s crises on immigrants and migrants, saying last fall that “radical, uncontrolled immigration and policies related to it are partly to blame for joblessness, housing and healthcare crisis.” In his submission to Immigration Canada, Galindo Prato writes that he was detained without trial after making allegations about corruption within the Venezuelan government. He said he was held for almost five months in a three-by-four-meter cell, where he was beaten and deprived of clean water, medical care, and adequate nutrition. But according to the court documents filed in the Supreme Court of Venezuela by the public prosecutors office and in Venezuelan media coverage, Galindo Prato was charged with the crime of helping the escape of a convicted drug trafficker, while he was serving as the legal consultant for a psychiatric clinic. Galindo Prato did not reply to multiple attempts to reach him through direct messages to his social media accounts. Anaida Poilievre did not reply to a request for comment by time of publication. A Conservative campaign spokesperson provided a written statement to The Breach that “Mr. Galindo Prato has pursued his case through established channels, including with the use of an immigration lawyer.” “While MPs may make requests for information to [Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada], MPs do not have the ability to influence immigration cases,” the spokesperson wrote. “It is certainly ridiculous to suggest that opposition Conservative MPs would be able to influence cases under a Liberal Government.” In fact, parliamentarians frequently advocate for the Immigration Minister to expedite immigration applications, including for undocumented people. “This is a disgusting smear of Ms. Poilievre’s extended family who have been subjected to persecution and political repression in Venezuela, and we will not be commenting further,” the spokesperson added.

Published March 28, 2025

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