Smugglers split this Toronto man from his family in 2007. Now a court has given them hope to reunite

Résumé détaillé

A judge rules the refusal in the brother’s case was unreasonable, and sends the case back to the Immigration Department.

Mo Youssufi has spent more than 15 years filing applications, appealing decisions and fighting an immigration system that seemed determined to keep his family apart.

Last week, the Federal Court threw the family a lifeline, sending their reunification case back to the Immigration Department for a new decision, offering fresh hope to a family split by smugglers and separated by bureaucracy.

“After so many years of waiting, uncertainty, and disappointment, it was incredibly emotional to finally receive some positive news,” said Youssufi, an Afghan who was resettled in Toronto by the Canadian government from Turkey in 2008.

“For the first time in a long while, it felt like our voices had truly been heard and that there was still hope for our family to be together again.”

The family’s ordeal started in 2006, when Youssufi’s mother fled Herat, in western Afghanistan, with her four children and two grandkids after they were targeted by the Taliban following the U.S.-led intervention, because their father worked for the government. He was threatened and then vanished.

After arriving in Turkey, they were separated in 2007 when smugglers split them into two groups. Youssufi’s mother, Tooba Gholan Hasan, and youngest brother, Mehran Youssufi, ended up in Denmark where they have been granted temporary status; the rest of the family were rescued by United Nations officials and later sponsored to go to Canada.

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In 2009, Youssufi finally located his mother and sibling through a grapevine of people over the internet and an Afghan TV program in the U.S. The family would spend the following 15 years trying, without success, to reunite in Canada.

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