Canada Deports Metzgers Back to U.S.

Canadian immigration officials ordered white supremacists Tom and John Metzger deported Thursday, calling them “a danger to the public.”

Oxana Kowalyk, an immigration hearing officer, found that the Metzgers’ writings and speeches “vilify and degrade” minority groups in Canada and said that, if she let the two men go free, those minority groups might conclude that the Canadian government condoned racist behavior.

Canadian authorities drove the Metzgers to Buffalo, N.Y., Thursday evening with a police escort and handed them over to U.S. immigration officers. Those officers confirmed the Metzgers’ citizenship and passed them on to U.S. Customs officials, who will decide whether or not to detain the elder Metzger, an official at the border crossing said.

By traveling to Canada, Tom Metzger may have violated probation terms set after a 1991 misdemeanor hate crime conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Althoughe Metzger received permission from his parole officer to travel to New York, he was not to leave the country, a probation department official said.

In her ruling Thursday, Kowalyk said the Metzgers had entered the country illegally, pointing out that they had led border officials to believe that they were visiting Canada on a shopping trip, when in fact they had been planning to speak at a Canadian white supremacists’ rally. She said that, if the Metzgers had revealed the real purpose of their visit, they never would have been allowed into Canada.

Kowalyk added that the Metzgers’ activities constituted a violation of the country’s hate laws. In Canada, it is an offense to “incite hatred of any identifiable group.”

“I find you willfully promote hatred,” said Kowalyk, who had reviewed copies of the Metzgers’ White Aryan Resistance newspaper, introduced as evidence by the immigration department.

The Metzgers appeared at the hearing in a prison-issue blue sweat shirt, baggy pants and jogging shoes.

Neither man said much during the 24-minute proceedings. But, at the end, Tom Metzger complained that he had intended to go back to the United States anyway, and that the Canadians had been holding him up.

“I would have been gone Monday, if you people would have let this facade quit,” he grumbled. “It seems you people are the ones who wanted to keep us in Canada. . . . They used to do it by just dumping the Wobblies at the border and beating the (expletive) out of them. I prefer that.”

Metzger’s reference was to the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical turn-of-the-century union movement whose members, known as Wobblies, had frequent run-ins with the authorities.

As he left the jailhouse chapel, where the hearing was held, Tom Metzger shouted, “No free speech! No free trade!” His son remained silent.

In an earlier hearing, the Metzgers had argued in their own defense that their speeches at the Canadian white supremacists’ rally did not propagate racial hatred. Tom Metzger said he gave a speech about corruption in Ottawa and Washington; John Metzger said he spoke on the need to become more professional and use high technology.

Kowalyk disagreed, pointing out that the elder Metzger identified himself as “an activist for the white race,” and mentioned an Ethiopian student in whose death Metzger was implicated.

Last year, a Portland, Ore., jury awarded $12.5 million to the student’s family after ruling that Tom and John Metzger had incited his beating death. Metzger was forced to sell his Fallbrook home to pay part of the award.

The deportation order means that the Metzgers will be unable to enter Canada for any purpose in the future, unless they can get a letter of exemption from the minister of external affairs. If they enter Canada illegally again, they will be subject to fines and imprisonment.

The consequences of Tom Metzger’s apparent probation violation remain unclear.

Although Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith could have issued a probation violation bench warrant calling for Metzger’s arrest, he has chosen to wait.

“We’re just going to look at all the reports,” Smith said. “I wouldn’t waste the money (to have him arrested at the airport). We have all the information. We’ll do it on our own terms. Let him pay his own (airline) ticket.”

However, a U.S. Customs official in Los Angeles said that, if any law enforcement agency has entered word of Tom Metzger’s probation violation with the National Crime Information Center, that could mean detention in Buffalo. “If local law enforcement has reported it, that normally means automatic detention,” he said.

Metzger was sentenced last December to six months in jail for his role in a 1983 cross burning in a racially mixed San Fernando Valley neighborhood. He began serving his sentence Jan. 6 but was granted an early release by Smith after 46 days to be with his critically ill wife, who has since died.

Because he was convicted of a misdemeanor and not a felony, he can only be returned to jail for the rest of his sentence--which Smith estimated to be about two months. “That’s the problem with a misdemeanor,” Smith said, adding that Metzger could also be fined.

Although the Los Angeles County Probation Department was unaware of Metzger’s plans to visit Canada, the Los Angeles Police Department, San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and Canadian immigration officials were. Canadian officials asked the U.S. agencies to help them with their investigation of the Metzgers as early as June 20.