They say that before she got sick, Bilqis Fatima made the best food on the block, and fed whoever came through her door. Despite her own meagre welfare cheque, she took care of the down-and-out, the rejected refugee claimants and evictees. Every night, she joined the neighbourhood women on the front stoop of their buildings to catch up on the latest comings and goings, and news of home.

That was before the immigration authorities cut off the 63-year-old diabeticâe(TM)s welfare and threw her in prison.

It seems they had trouble believing that she watched her husband murdered and her children kidnapped by the Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP), a sectarian group in her home country of Pakistan. The SSP and its splinter group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) have been associated with the repeated massacres of Shiâe(TM)ites in Pakistan. According to some estimates, more than 2,000 people &#0151 the majority of them Shiâe(TM)ites &#0151 have been killed by the SSP, LJ and their Shiâe(TM)ite counterpart Sipah-e-Mohammad of Pakistan (SMP) since 1990.

Still, the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) felt that the case of Bilqis Fatima and her 17-year-old son Imran Hussain lacked credibility. They rejected the mother and sonâe(TM)s file, and set a deportation date for March. Thatâe(TM)s where things really fell apart.

As Fatimaâe(TM)s health had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk or perform regular household tasks, her son &#0151 technically still a minor &#0151 took on increasing responsibility, including organising and corresponding with lawyers, welfare agents and immigration officers. To this day, he insists that their former lawyer showed them the paper she called an appeal and told them their deportation order had been cancelled. Immigration disagrees.

When Hussain learned of the mistake he contacted immigration and was told to present himself to the authorities on a weekly basis so they could keep track of the family. For the first check-in they told him to bring his mother, and as soon as his mother was released from a stay in the hospital Hussain did just that. To their complete shock, the mother and son were immediately whisked over to the detention centre.

That was in June.

At their last detention review, the Montreal IRB decided to continue the detention of Bilqis Fatima and Imran Hussain on the grounds that Bilqis &#0151 who uses a wheelchair &#0151 and her son were a flight risk, and that anyway, their removal to the U.S. was scheduled to take place any minute.

That was in late July.

Since their incarceration, Fatima has been forced to make the long trek from the detention centre in Laval to the hospital in Montreal every second day. On a couple of occasions, she has been hospitalized overnight for complications. Despite the fact that she speaks neither English nor French, her son has not been allowed to accompany her for mediation. According to Fatimaâe(TM)s doctors, even if she were able to evade the SSP in Pakistan, her condition is now too fragile to survive the long voyage back.

So Canadian immigration took a different approach. Like vast numbers of other asylum-seekers, Fatima and Hussein spent a couple of days in the U.S. en route to Canada. Quoting a reciprocal agreement with the United States regarding the return of refugee claimants to their port of entry, Canada is now pressuring the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to allow the mother and son back across the border.

The family doesnâe(TM)t know a soul in the U.S. They have nowhere to stay in the U.S. They will not have access to welfare or medical assistance in the U.S. And refugee support workers on both sides of the border anticipate that even if they are allowed back across the border, they are highly unlikely to be granted refugee status in the U.S.

After a series of high-profile sectarian murders in August, 2000, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf banned LJ and SMP. In January, 2002, he added SSP, its rival Shiâe(TM)ite political party, Tehreek-Jafria Pakistan (TJP) and three other extremist groups.

But three girls were killed and 13 injured in a church bombing in Punjab last December. In March, gunmen shot down nine people at a Shiâe(TM)ite religious centre. Last month, 53 people were massacred during Friday prayers at a Shiâe(TM)ite mosque in the city of Quetta.

Amnesty International and other international human rights monitors have criticized the Pakistani government for insufficient protection of religious minorities. But Canadian immigration remains unconcerned. According to the Montreal-based Action Committee Against the Racial Profiling of Pakistani Refugees, at least 200 Pakistani refugees currently face deportation from Canada.

Back in the Laval detention centre, Bilqis Fatimaâe(TM)s feet are swollen and bleeding, a side effect of her advanced diabetes. Without the special diet she was on prior to her imprisonment, she routinely vomits her meals. She is sitting as tight as she can, waiting for her next detention review, at the end of August; waiting for the results of her formal appeal to immigration on humanitarian and compassionate grounds; praying she will not be removed before then; waiting for a special Ministerial permit for her release and residence in Canada; waiting for some form of justice.

She may be waiting a while yet.