It's hard to know who’s a ‘genuine’ asylum seeker. Just ask Anaida Poilievre’s uncle.

This translated article is appearing here as part of an Election 2025 collaboration between Le Devoir and Canada’s National Observer, to share news across the language divide.

While the number of asylum seekers arriving at the land border is on the rise, Pierre Poilievre is standing firm: “We must put an end to this fraud [by the Liberals] and only accept genuine asylum seekers,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.

And yet Poilievre’s uncle by marriage is among the tens of thousands of people who have taken the Roxham Road.

Of Venezuelan origin, Jose Gerardo Galindo Prato first arrived in 2004. Though his asylum application was refused in 2005, he did not leave until 2007. He then returned to Canada via the Roxham Road in 2018, claiming that he had been wrongly imprisoned in Venezuela after denouncing corruption.

His story, first reported by the independent media outlet The Breach, shows that the difference between “real” and “fake” refugees is less clear-cut than the Conservative leader's rhetoric would have us believe.

Since his election as leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre has repeatedly promised to “trace” and “deport” those already deemed ineligible for asylum in Canada. These “new and mainly false refugees,” as he describes them, should be the first to be sent back to their country of origin.

During his first stay in Canada, between 2004 and 2007, Galindo Prato lived without authorization after his asylum application was refused. Pierre and Anaida Poilievre were not yet a couple.

However, Galindo Prato attempted to apply for asylum again in 2018, entering via Roxham Road, according to the documents we obtained. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act prohibits applying for refugee status twice. His application was therefore “inadmissible.”

He then found himself in a legal limbo: deportations to Venezuela have been suspended since January 2019 because Canada considered the country too dangerous. He has remained here at least until 2023.

But if the policies that Pierre Poilievre says he wants to implement were already in effect six years ago, his uncle-in-law would potentially have found himself on the list of people Poilievre wants to “expel quickly”.

According to correspondence recovered by Le Devoir, Anaida Poilievre helped her uncle to apply for permanent residence on humanitarian grounds in 2021.

For this process, often referred to as “the last chance,” it is not uncommon for immigrants to seek the support of members of Parliament. This is what Anaida Poilievre did. “I'm trying to help my uncle,” she first wrote to one source, mentioning a “person in the MP's office” who was helping them. In another message sent via the Messenger app, she added: “We are applying in English so that the MP can help us.” 

The name of the elected representative, however, was not revealed.

Anaida Poilievre was then working as an executive assistant in the office of Conservative MP Michael Cooper, an ally of her husband. Neither Galindo Prato nor the Conservative Party responded to requests for comment.

Putting her forward

Anaida Poilievre has been working in politics since her early twenties. She has often been put forward since her husband's selection as party leader and is sometimes described as his “secret weapon.” Since the start of the campaign, she has introduced him at rallies.

Born in Venezuela, she arrived in Montreal with her parents, brothers and sister in the summer of 1995. Part of the family was already in the country, including an aunt. She quickly learned French to integrate into regular school and shares how her father went from being a banker in his country of origin to “picking fruit and vegetables” in Quebec.

The Conservative leader described her as a “real refugee”, but the details of her family's persecution - the main criterion for seeking asylum - have not been publicly explained. “I was young and all we were told was that we had to leave for better opportunities,” she said on a Radio X podcast.

Second time in Canada

Federal Court documents show Jose Gerardo Galindo Prato’s asylum application was refused in January 2005, but the details of the case remain private. In 2007, after two years of living “undocumented,” as he wrote in a letter requesting permanent residence, he left Canada on his own because of an expulsion order.

After returning to Venezuela, he continued to practice law, but was imprisoned in 2017. Upon his release, he first fled to Colombia, where the government was granting temporary residence permits to more than a million nationals from the neighboring country.

During those same months, in the summer of 2018, Poilievre was concerned precisely about the costs associated with taking in asylum seekers from Roxham Road during a parliamentary committee meeting. “Who is going to pay?” the Conservative MP asked his peers.

A little over two months later, in October 2018, his uncle-in-law, Galindo Prato, was intercepted by the RCMP. He spent about 48 hours at the border, explaining his political situation. He then headed to Montreal to try to rebuild his life. A few months later, he was working as a cleaner and had found an apartment, all according to his letter to the Ministry of Immigration.

Even though he could not apply for asylum a second time, he was able to remain in the country thanks to a kind of migratory limbo, according to two immigration lawyers consulted by Le Devoir. As soon as he set foot in the country, and even without being able to apply for asylum, he was entitled to a pre-removal risk assessment and was not deported.

Shortly after, the political and economic unrest in Venezuela in 2019 led to a moratorium on deportations to the country.

Two more years passed before he applied for permanent residence on humanitarian grounds in 2021, with the help of his niece. It is unclear whether this application was accepted, as immigration files are confidential.

Well-founded applications?

According to Poilievre, illegal crossings at Roxham Road are one of the biggest “failures” of his former political opponent, Justin Trudeau.

Is Galindo Prato one of those whom Poilievre labels a “fake refugee,” particularly in his speech launching his campaign?

The circumstances that drove him into exile are presented differently between 2004 and 2018. The first time, he claims to have participated in campaigns against the socialist government of Hugo Chávez, but there is no public record of the “harassment” he claims to have suffered at that time.

In 2017, documents from the Supreme Court of Venezuela accused him of helping a drug trafficker escape from prison.

His version is rather that he was persecuted and imprisoned without trial in Venezuela, after denunciations of corruption in health care in the state of Tachira, in the west of the country. The then-governor of Tachira, José Vielma Mora, was also sanctioned personally by Canada in November 2017 as being responsible for or complicit in acts of corruption and serious human rights violations, which is in line with the man's claims.

In Facebook posts, Galindo Prato says he began his “exodus” after imprisonment to “ensure his physical integrity.” Anaida Poilievre also defended him in a now-deleted post, according to The Breach.

Last December, when well ahead in the polls, Poilievre reiterated his views on asylum seekers: “I like real refugees,” Poilievre said. “Our country was built largely by real refugees who were truly fleeing danger, like my wife. But I have no time to waste with the liars who come to our country, and that is the problem we must eliminate.”