Overview
- Officers from the Canada Border Services Agency attended a long-running student protest in Calgary to verify immigration status and checked 20 people, identifying 12 as possibly inadmissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
- Calgary police requested CBSA help after officers said they had concerns about identification during an interaction with protesters who had set up tents without a permit on city property.
- Those flagged were asked to attend follow-up interviews at a CBSA office and lawyers warn the usual next step can be the issuance of exclusion orders that require immediate departure and bar return for a period.
- The protest grew from hundreds of international graduates who say their post-graduation work permits were denied after taking non-credit programs connected to Portage College, and the college is seeking clarification from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada about eligibility rules.
- The episode highlights how a May 15, 2024 policy cutoff is reshaping who qualifies for post-graduation work permits and could prompt faster enforcement actions, legal fights over individual cases, and wider scrutiny of college–program arrangements.