Refugee Law After 9/11: Sanctuary and Security in Canada and the United States by Obiora Chinedu Okafor

Abstract

Reviewed by: Refugee Law After 9/11: Sanctuary and Security in Canada and the United States by Obiora Chinedu Okafor Dr. James C. Simeon (bio) Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Refugee Law After 9/11: Sanctuary and Security in Canada and the United States (UBC Press, 2020), ISBN 9780774861465, 349 pages. Professor Okafor’s Refugee Law After 9/11 should be essential reading for all those who are working in the field of refugee law in Canada and the United States. It is extremely well conceptualized, researched, legally analyzed, and written. As the title suggests, what this book sets out to do is “to determine more precisely the extent to which the heightened sense of security vulnerability that was produced by the 9/11 attacks did in fact trigger significant alterations in the refugee law regimes of Canada and the United States.”1 Using the marker of 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in modern history, the book examines in detail what changed in refugee law after 9/11 in these two closely related—economically, socially, culturally, and, so it appears, legally—countries. Interestingly, Canada was seriously impacted by 9/11, but obviously not to the same degree or in the same ways as the United States. This primary concern for what changed in refugee law in these two countries following 9/11 allows for the examination of two other “conceptual preoccupations:” to what extent has a “security relativism” mentality helped to shape the law’s (mis) treatment of refugees in either Canada or the United States; and what does this tell us of the cogency, coherence, and integrity of the dominant national self-image of the people in these closely related States. These last two concerns are considered to be less crucial than the first. The four substantive chapters in this volume deal, unquestionably, with four of the most salient issues in the field of national and international refugee law: (1) the deportation to torture of refugees and other non-citizens; (2) the detention of refugees; (3) the application of terrorism-related inadmissibility; and (4) the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement. Okafor argues that the pre-9/11 refugee regime looks very much like the post-9/11 refugee regime, “only more so.”2 This is followed by the notable assertion that “the underlying point that the book seeks to make is that in both countries, things were already so bad with refugee law before 9/11 that there was significantly less room than [End Page 445] many have supposed for them to get all that much worse.”3 Further, Okafor notes for the most part, that the refugee law regimes in the two countries “reacted in strikingly similar ways to the heightened security vigil triggered by the 9/11 attacks.”4 This is not to say that Okafor does not acknowledge the significant impact that 9/11 had some two decades ago on the world, such as the security protocols instituted at international airports, increased electronic surveillance of citizens, the US led “War on Terrorism,” and the military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Rather his focus is on refugee law and practice in Canada and the US before and after 9/11. Given the international peremptory norm that no one can be deported to torture, it is surprising to find that in the US the grant rates for relief from deportation to torture is the exception and not the rule.5 Okafor notes that the US Supreme Court judgement of Zadvydas v. Davis, which laid down the principle of the illegality of indefinite detention of deportable non-citizens, and similar case law in Canada, does not present a problem for these states when addressing national security considerations.6 It is argued that it is neither legally nor ethically appropriate to erode the absolute bar in the US against deportation to torture or the less than absolute bar to torture in Canada. Nevertheless, it is argued that this is precisely what has taken place.7 When analyzing detention in the United States, Okafor makes the point that even though more persons were rounded up and new legislation was passed in the aftermath of 9/11 there were no...