Canada’s efforts to deport high-ranking members of the Iranian government have come under renewed scrutiny. Mojdeh Shahriari, a Vancouver-based refugee lawyer who fled from Iran in 1986, suggests banning all Iranian government officials from the country.Shaghayegh Moradiannejad/The Globe and Mail
On the first day of his recent deportation hearing, Abbas Omidi found himself at loggerheads with the government lawyer arguing for his removal from Canada.
At issue was not his loyalty to the repressive Iranian regime, his employer for nearly 27 years. And no one was suggesting he was involved in violent crackdowns on protesters.
Instead, the back and forth was rather more mundane. In an effort to determine whether the Canadian government should consider Mr. Omidi a “senior” member of the Iranian regime, the lawyer was trying to pin down the precise reporting structure in the mineral exploration office where the 55-year-old worked as a geologist.
During a 25-minute exchange, mediated by a Farsi interpreter, they debated whether Mr. Omidi was two rungs below the deputy minister or four. They did not reach a consensus.
Canada’s efforts to deport high-ranking members of the Iranian government have come under renewed scrutiny since the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran in February, sparking concerns that more regime members could flee to this country.
In response to Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters in the fall of 2022, the federal government announced a ban on senior Iranian officials entering and staying in Canada. But since then, deportation cases have moved at a snail’s pace through lengthy investigations, hearings and appeals. To date, border authorities have removed only one regime official from Canada, a record that has been denounced by members of the Iranian diaspora.
Mr. Omidi is one of 34 officials identified by the Canada Border Services Agency as candidates for removal under the federal ban. His case offers a rare window into a years-long, Kafkaesque process that satisfies neither those who want to see Iranian officials deported nor those who defend them.
Over five days of online hearings, spanning five weeks, Mr. Omidi was questioned for nearly 30 hours about mining reports, mineral licence renewals and whether he had the authority to approve vacation requests. Now, adjudicator Iris Kohler must use his testimony to decide whether he should be deported from Canada.
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Ms. Kohler’s decision, which will not come for several months, need not assess whether Mr. Omidi supports the Iranian regime. Instead, it may be based entirely on his rank in the public service – a test currently being challenged in court.
Whichever way the adjudicator rules, her decision will probably be contested. Unless Mr. Omidi chooses to leave the country, there is likely no end to his case in sight.
The CBSA began building its case against Mr. Omidi soon after Ottawa designated Iran a regime “that has engaged in terrorism and systematic and gross human-rights violations” in November, 2022. The designation bans Iranian heads of state, cabinet members, ambassadors, senior diplomats, members of the judiciary, senior military, intelligence officials and senior public servants from Canada.
Since the designation, the CBSA has received more than 450 tips about possible senior Iranian officials in Canada. As of May 1, the agency was investigating or seeking to deport 90 people, including the 34 it has deemed inadmissible.
But so far, only one senior official has actually been removed from Canada: Majid Iranmanesh, who served as director-general for Iran’s vice-president of science and technology. Seven others have left voluntarily.
A key challenge in such cases is that Canada’s immigration law doesn’t specify who qualifies as a senior public servant or military officer. Instead, adjudicators at the Immigration and Refugee Board have come to rely on the “top-half test,” according to which anyone found to have held a position in the upper 50 per cent of an organization’s hierarchy can be deemed senior.
During his hearing, Mr. Omidi faced detailed questioning about his responsibilities as deputy director-general of the exploration office in Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, a position he held from 2013 to 2020 before moving to Canada. He was asked whether he had the power to grant or cancel mining licences (he said he did not) and whether he could hire or fire employees (he could only approve their vacation requests when his boss was away, he said).
The hearing moved at a glacial pace, frequently delayed by the challenge of translating technical terms. At one point, it ground to a halt while the adjudicator established that mineral permissions, licences and certificates all referred to the same thing. Later, there was considerable confusion over the chemical element molybdenum.
Through it all, Mr. Omidi painted himself as a technician with no real authority. “How could I have any power over the influence of the government with the knowledge of geology?” he said on the final day. “This is a mistake.”
The top-half test first appeared in operation manuals for immigration officials more than two decades ago. It has since been endorsed by the Federal Court, which in 2023 found that rank alone is enough to label someone a senior official, regardless of their job description.
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When Mr. Iranmanesh was issued a deportation order in 2024, the adjudicator noted he was “not alleged to have committed any wrongdoing.” Once an official is found to have occupied a position in the top half of a regime, the board need not consider if they “exercised influence” on behalf of that government, the adjudicator said.
But the test has drawn criticism from all sides. The advocacy group Iranian Canadian Legal Professionals believes Canada is not moving fast enough to deport regime members, in part because the definition of a senior official is too ambiguous. The group would like specific job titles to be deemed senior automatically.
Mojdeh Shahriari, a Vancouver-based refugee lawyer who fled to Canada from Iran in 1986, suggested going a step further and banning all Iranian government officials from the country, regardless of seniority. “I don’t know how else we are going to tackle this problem,” she said. “This process will go on for years and years for every individual case.”
Others say the top-half test unfairly ensnares mid-level bureaucrats who were never involved in the abuses of the regime they served, and may not have felt any loyalty to it. “Middle management is middle management,” said Jared Will, a Toronto-based immigration lawyer. “I find it hard to imagine that that’s what Parliament meant when it said senior members have to be found inadmissible.”
The Federal Court of Appeal is currently considering the fate of one of Mr. Will’s clients in a case that is challenging the top-half test. The border agency is trying to deport Dr. Ghulam Wahab, an 86-year-old retired orthopedic surgeon, for having worked as an army doctor during Afghanistan’s former Marxist regimes from 1978 to 1992. A ban on high-ranking members of those regimes has been in place since 1994.
Mr. Will says his client never joined the Marxist party, and was found to be a senior official based purely on his highest military rank of colonel. He believes the appeal court may use the case to weigh in on whether the top-half test is reasonable. During the hearing, he said, “the court was very interested in that question and seemed extremely skeptical.”
Mr. Omidi’s hearing ended in mid-April, but a decision will not come for several months, after both sides have made final submissions in writing. If Ms. Kohler decides he isn’t senior enough to be deported, the CBSA can appeal. If she issues a deportation order, Mr. Omidi can seek judicial review in Federal Court.
If he’s unsuccessful, Mr. Omidi could request ministerial relief, a last-ditch effort to get an exemption. Mr. Will said people who go that route can spend up to 20 years “in legal limbo,” and some will “just get fed up and leave.”
Arghavan Gerami, an Iranian-born immigration lawyer in Ottawa, said she recognizes the top-half test offers little room for public servants to argue they were not complicit in their government’s crimes. But she said Iranian officials don’t advance in the regime without showing loyalty.
“Once you’re a senior member, you’re in a regime that’s killing people. And you’re trying to work in that regime,” she said. “It crosses that line for me.”