This Syrian trans woman has been stranded in an airport for seven months after Canada pulled her refugee status mid-journey

When Arwa Almsrawi’s plane lifted off in Saudi Arabia, beginning a journey that was to take her to Vancouver, she couldn’t help but dream of the new life that awaited her on the other side. 
A transgender woman from Syria, Almsrawi had been granted refugee status by Canada, following a referral from the U.N. Refugee Agency. After fleeing civil war in her home country and living undocumented in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade, Almsrawi believed she was on the cusp of freedom for the first time in her life.
“Finally I’m going to be a full human being,” she thought to herself at the time. 
As she began the second leg of her journey, trouble arose. U.S. authorities prevented Almsrawi from boarding her connecting flight from Istanbul to Toronto because they said she was on their No Fly List.
Seven months later, Almsrawi remains stuck at the Istanbul airport, enduring what her lawyer calls a “Kafkaesque” ordeal.
After the U.S. intervention, Canada reopened her refugee application and last week they revoked her status with little explanation.
“It’s absolutely shocking,” said Erin Simpson, Almsrawi’s Canadian lawyer. “(The Canadian government) removed her from a place in which she was relatively safe for more than a decade on the promise of safety in Canada. Then they abandoned her midflight.”
Simpson, an immigration lawyer for more than a decade, said she has never encountered a situation like this, where a migrant’s refugee status was revoked while en route to their destination, effectively stranding them. She is challenging the government’s decision in federal court, but it’s not clear when the case will be heard.
In the meantime, Almsrawi, who prefers to use the first name Nicole, remains in limbo — fearing for her life if she were to return to Syria, but not admissible to any other country. 
“No country is willing to accept me,” she said through an Arabic interpreter in a video call with the Star last week. “I have no place to go.”
Although not formally detained, Almsrawi says she feels imprisoned at the airport. She relies on security guards for all of her basic needs and her movement is restricted. Meanwhile, her mental health has deteriorated, and she recently disclosed two suicide attempts to a psychiatrist hired by her lawyer.
Almsrawi has been told by Canadian officials she will no longer be provided with meals and accommodations at the Istanbul airport as of Oct. 2. 
She could be sent back to Syria or forced into a temporary holding centre for Syrian migrants in Turkey, neither of which will be safe for her as a trans woman, Simpson said. Simpson is seeking an injunction that would allow Almsrawi to remain at the airport until the federal court can hear her case.
Almsrawi said she doesn’t know why she would be on the U.S. No Fly List, which the Department of Homeland Security describes as containing identity information for “known or suspected terrorists.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. agency said they could not comment on “specific security cases.”
Simpson said the Canadian government has not disclosed any evidence of any steps it has taken to check whether Almsrawi’s name is actually on the U.S. list, or if she is actually the person the list is targeting.
“Arwa is a very common name,” Simpson said, adding that Almsrawi, who converted to Christianity as a teenager and is estranged from her family, has relatives with the same first and last name.
The letter informing Almsrawi of Canada’s decision to rescind her refugee status does not include any specific allegations, only that her inclusion on the U.S. No Fly List introduced “unknowables” into the assessment of her admissibility.
“These ‘unknowables’ in my view, make the risk to the security of the Canadian public too great, and this to me is of more weight, when measured against your vulnerable circumstances,” reads the letter.
The other reason the government cites for rescinding Almsrawi’s refugee status is a Canadian visa application made in Almsrawi’s name in 2019. The government says the application includes false information, which impugns Almsrawi’s credibility. But Almsrawi says she has been upfront and transparent about the visa application in all of her dealings with Canadian officials, going back to her first interview last October. 
She says that in an effort to leave Saudi Arabia, where she had no legal status and could not legally work, she hired an immigration agent who told her he could obtain a visa for her to travel to Canada. She provided the agent with copies of her expired Syrian passport and filled out some paperwork, but never heard from the agent again, never paid him and had no idea what happened to the application, she said. 
Simpson said any confusion about the 2019 visa application is minor and, most importantly, the information was known to Canadian officials when they initially assessed and approved Almsrawi’s refugee claim earlier this year.
“Relying on something that existed before she was approved to then put her in the kind of danger they’re putting her in, it’s unacceptable,” Simpson said. “That can’t be how this operates.”
Immigration minister Marc Miller declined to be interviewed for this story, and a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said they could not comment on the specifics of Almsrawi’s case, citing privacy laws and the pending court case. 
“Canada has a proud history of protecting and resettling those who are the most in need of resettlement, including 2SLGBTQI+ refugees and their families,” the spokesperson said, adding that decisions regarding refugee status are made by “highly-trained” immigration officers and can be rescinded due to “many factors.”
In her federal court affidavit, Almsrawi accuses Canadian officials of transphobic discrimination. In April, after she had been living at the airport for two months, she was interviewed by a Canadian diplomat based in the United Arab Emirates — the same one who would later decide to rescind her refugee status. 
The diplomat was hostile and aggressive, she said, and he accused her of augmenting her body and claiming to be trans only so she could get refugee status.
“You did what you did to your body to get into Canada,” the diplomat said, according to her affidavit.
Canada’s immigration ministry did not address these allegations.
It is not clear what will happen next for Almsrawi.
The U.N. Refugee Agency, also known as UNHCR, which helped co-ordinate her refugee claim, said they are monitoring the situation closely.
“While we cannot go into depth of our efforts for protection and confidentiality reasons, we can confirm that we are making interventions with all relevant interlocutors to find the best possible outcome,” a spokesperson said via email.