Canada Deports Supremacists Metzger, Son

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 status and passed them on to U.S. Customs officials, who would decide whether or not to detain the elder Metzger, an official at the border crossing said.

By traveling to Canada, Tom Metzger violated probation terms set after a 1991 misdemeanor hate crime conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court. While Metzger received permission from his parole officer to travel to New York, he was not supposed 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.

At the end of the hearing, 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.

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

Metzger, of Fallbrook, 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 on Jan. 6, but was granted an early release by Smith after 46 days to be with his critically ill wife, who has since died.

Times staff writer Walsh reported from Toronto; Romney from San Diego.