CCPR/C/125/D/3041/2017 conditions in detention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are life-threatening and amount to inhuman and degrading treatment. The author notes that Canada has acknowledged the gravity and prevalence of human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has even imposed a moratorium on removals to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which still remains in place. 5.6 The author submits that she did not have a fair opportunity of being heard because she was only heard by officers of the Canada Border Services Agency during the port-ofentry interviews, where claimants are not advised by counsel and are often misinformed. The records of these interviews are not exhaustive, as pointed out by a report by the Canadian Council for Refugees.5 The author highlights the fact that she was not eligible for the quasi-judicial refugee determination system in application with the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement and could only use the pre-removal risk assessment programme, which does not offer equivalent procedural safeguards in the refugee determination process. The pre-removal risk assessment programme is a purely administrative procedure; applications are processed by immigration officers (public servants employed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada), not by independent persons. The general principal is that a pre-removal risk assessment application is a written procedure, and hearings are held only exceptionally, at the discretion of the officer processing the application. According to section 169 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, oral hearings are aimed at clarifying an applicant’s testimony when there are doubts about his or her credibility or the conclusive value of evidence given. None of the author’s repeated requests for an oral hearing was accepted, and she was never heard during the processing of her pre-removal risk assessment application. She further submits that the officer processing her application did not examine her claims regarding the personal risks she would face if she were deported. The Federal Court, in its order of 26 May 2017, admits that an oral hearing should have been held and that the author is a citizen of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although it illogically concluded that she would not be exposed to any irreparable harm in Angola because she was able to live there for many years. Furthermore, the author was arrested on 6 November 2017, and was informed the following day that she and her children would be deported on 8 November 2017. Such expeditious enforcement of their removal order did not allow the author to explain the reasons against her deportation in order to have her case reviewed. The unfairness that characterized the pre-removal risk assessment process and the enforcement of the removal order in the author’s case amount to a violation of article 13 of the Covenant, in conjunction with article 7. 5.7 Regarding the author’s submissions under articles 17 (1), 23 (1) and 24 (1), the State party submits that the family can be separated only because of the parents’ own decision, because the author previously tried to enter Canada with her children and filed a refugee request asserting that her husband had died. The author clarifies that she declared as much because she believed it was in the best interests of her children. The family’s original plan was to seek asylum in Canada (owing to perceived closer linguistic and cultural ties with Canada than with the United States), but the author’s husband feared that crossing the border illegally was too dangerous. The author then decided to try to cross the border by foot with her children and, to be consistent with her husband’s identity known at the National Intelligence Agency and following incorrect advice that she received in the United States, she obtained identity documents using that family name. In her administrative stay request, the author submitted that her deportation together with her two older children would cause irreparable harm, as the family would be separated. The Canada Border Services Agency officer however rejected the stay request because the psychological report was not reliable owing to its many contradictions. The author explains that such contradictions were due to misunderstandings by the Canada Border Services Agency officer. Furthermore, the officer submitted that the psychologist’s report was mainly based on the author’s statements; this is not however accurate, given that the psychologist provides a list of the methodology employed in her examination. In the event of deportation, 5 8 Canadian Council for Refugees and Sojourn House, Welcome to Canada: The Experience of Refugee Claimants at Port-of-Entry Interviews, November 2010 (available from http://ccrweb.ca/files/poereport.pdf), pp. 2–3.