Just as things were getting a little uncomfortable for Jason Kenney on the refugee file -- because of his own statements that a country he plans to designate "safe" is hardly, in fact, safe for Jews and Roma -- the Minister of Immigration (with an assist from the Minister of Public Safety) pulls a rabbit out of a hat.

This morning, with scant advance notice, reporters received a news release from the Immigration Department saying Kenney would be holding a news conference at the border crossing at Stanstead, Quebec. There were no other details.

It turns out the purpose of this bit of showmanship was to announce that the Government had bagged its first batch of detainees covered by the new provisions of Bill C-31 that govern so-called "irregular arrivals."

The Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, had some pretty tough words on Friday for a country he has, in the past, described as a “liberal democracy” that “respects human rights.”

At a news conference in Ottawa on Friday, Kenney said that during a recent visit to that country he noted “a very disturbing rise of xenophobic extremism.”

He told reporters he was very disturbed to hear accounts from members of ethnic and religious minority communities about “expressions of hatred and xenophobia” and was “deeply concerned” about the actions of  neo-Nazi political extremists he referred to as “crazy and hateful xenophobic nutbars.”