Canada Deports Supremacists Metzger, Son

Canadian immigration officials deported white supremacists Tom and John Metzger 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 condones 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.

By traveling to Canada, Tom Metzger violated probation terms set after a 1991 misdemeanor hate crime conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

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 they had been planning to speak at a Canadian white supremacists’ rally.

Kowalyk said 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.”

At the end of the hearing, Tom Metzger, of Fallbrook, said he had intended to go back to the United States, and that the Canadian government has been holding him up.