International Roundup

Canadian immigration judges have ruled that there were sufficient grounds to hold in custody a group of Pakistani men suspected as members of an Al Qaida sleeper cell. The ruling affected seven out of a group of 19 men arrested by a terrorism task force last month appeared before the immigration board. Canadian immigration intelligence officials say the men belong to a network of 31 Muslim men living illegally in Toronto, pretending o be foreign students while plotting attacks against Canada and the United States. The Board ruled that the men can be held while counter-terrorism investigators examine 25 boxes of documents and 30 computers seized during the raids.

"Obviously, it will be necessary for the authorities to sift through that material," said Immigration and Refugee Board Member Dennis Paxton.

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British Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that new quarterly asylum figures published last week show that the government is likely to meet its target of halving the number of monthly asylum claims by the end of September. Official figures show new claims are running at under 5,000, compared with 9,000 last October. Blunkett said the Home Office plans to introduce biometric data as a requirement for visa applications, in order to better track illegal immigrants and guard against abuse of the asylum system by reducing the country's "pull factor."

The Refugee Council said tougher entry rules were denying protection to those who need it most and that "severe border controls" were the likely cause behind the fall in asylum numbers, in addition to new restrictions on benefits to applicants already in the country.

According to the Sunday Times, an unnamed whistle-blower in the immigration service claims that the administration is telling officers not to arrested suspected illegal immigrants so that the prime minister can meet his asylum target. The officer said staff are being "discouraged" from arresting illegal immigrants in order to deflate the statistics artificially. The tactic could make the number fall because many illegal immigrants file asylum claims only if they are caught, as a means of slowing the deportation process.

The whistleblower claimed that he had been criticized recently for arresting several dozen illegal immigrants. The Home Office said the allegation was "completely false" and denied that there was any instruction issued to immigration staff telling them "not to pick up illegals in case they claim asylum."

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A Belgian woman was arrested, given a repatriation order, and kept overnight in jail after being mistaken for an illegal immigrant by federal police and the Foreign Office.

Bicha Monkokole, a twenty year-old Belgian citizen, was arrested last month, despite producing a Belgian identity card, passport, and several other forms of identification.

According to the report, the police "contacted the Foreign Office who, without any further verification, issued Bicha’s expulsion orders, citing that she did not have a suitable visa in her passport to visit Belgium… despite having a Belgian passport."