Olivia Chow wants to keep ICE out of Toronto during the World Cup
The mayor put forward a motion to oppose the potential deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer
With the World Cup just months away from arriving in Toronto, Mayor Olivia Chow has put forward a motion to oppose the potential deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in the city during the games.
“ICE has demonstrated through their actions in Minnesota and across the US that they bring fear and disorder, not safety and security,” Chow wrote in the motion, presented to city council today. “Any presence of ICE in Toronto is liable to create fear during a time when we want to welcome the world and ensure that everyone feels safe.”
Related: World Cup traffic will be 10 per cent worse than regular traffic
The proposal makes a specific request to the federal public safety minister, the minister of foreign affairs and the provincial solicitor general to “reject” ICE deployment, in order for Torontonians and visitors to “celebrate everything that brings us together.”
Chow’s concerns are not without precedent. ICE attended the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games in Italy last month, and city councillors in Vancouver put forward a similar motion ahead of the city’s own World Cup matches.
The motion in Vancouver did not proceed after council determined that ICE would not attend the World Cup there. “US agencies have zero jurisdiction, zero authority to conduct law enforcement in Canada,” said Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, according to CBC.
Mayor Chow’s motion would also include having the city manager instruct city staff to avoid actions supporting ICE.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
