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Ottawa tries yet again to kick an alleged top Mafia boss out of Canada
Ottawa has been trying — and failing — for 40 years to kick Vincenzo (Jimmy) DeMaria out; a new immigration appeal renews the fightPublished Jan 26, 2024
The federal government is appealing an immigration board decision that allows an Italian man who police said is Toronto’s top Mafia figure to remain in Canada.
Ottawa has been trying — and failing — to kick Vincenzo (Jimmy) DeMaria out of the country for more than 40 years.
Last month, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board declined to rule that DeMaria was unable to remain in Canada, saying the large volume of evidence presented by the government of his membership in the Mafia was “circumstantial.”
Madona Mokbel ruled that while she agreed the ’Ndrangheta, the proper name of the Mafia in Italy’s southern region of Calabria, was a real criminal organization, the government failed to prove DeMaria was a member of it.
DeMaria has lived in Canada for almost all his 72 years after emigrating from Italy with his parents as a baby, but he never became a Canadian citizen. The possibility of citizenship was closed to him after he was convicted of shooting a man who owed him money, killing him at a fruit store in Toronto in 1981.
Ever since his second-degree murder conviction, the government has been trying to deport him, with each attempt fully challenged and litigated by DeMaria and a bank of lawyers.
He was released from prison on full parole in 1992 and lived without legal problems for some time. Over the years, however, various police investigators alleged he grew to become an influential member of the ‘Ndrangheta in Toronto.
At one immigration hearing a police officer named him as the mob’s “top guy in Toronto.”
At his last immigration hearing, held in May, DeMaria denied being a member of the Mafia.
He denied knowing anything about the ’Ndrangheta, apart from what he has read in newspapers, and said he had no links to mobsters and didn’t know notorious mobsters in Canada.
When DeMaria was asked at the hearing about a time in 2012 when police notified him that his life was in danger from Vito Rizzuto, at the time the powerful Mafia boss in Montreal, DeMaria dismissed it.
“I do not know Mr. Rizzuto. I have never had any issues with Mr. Rizzuto. I do not even know who he is or what he is. I have never been to Montreal. I do not know where Montreal even is,” he said.
DeMaria claimed anti-Italian prejudice was behind efforts to deport him.
“This whole thing, this is stereotyped,” he said.
“A lot of this, if you really look at a lot of this, this is a lot of ethnic profiling going on here. Because you come from a certain area, you come from there, so because you come from there, this and that, this must be the case. That is typical profiling here.”
The Minister of Public Safety filed a notice of appeal with the Immigration and Refugee Board on Jan. 18, citing four grounds of dispute with IRB member Mokbel’s December decision.
The government claims: Mokbel committed an error by not finding DeMaria inadmissible to Canada on grounds of organized criminality; her decision is unreasonable “in the face of all of the evidence”; she failed to give a reasonable and lawful assessment and weighing of the evidence; and she applied the wrong standard of proof.
Three lawyers representing DeMaria at his immigration hearing did not respond to a request for comment from National Post prior to publishing deadline.
It will likely be months before an appeal hearing is scheduled.
Ottawa tries yet again to kick an alleged top Mafia boss out of Canada
Ottawa has been trying — and failing — for 40 years to kick Vincenzo (Jimmy) DeMaria out; a new immigration appeal renews the fight
