Brazilian says he was deported after blowing whistle on Winnipegger who illegally hired foreign workers

A Brazilian man says he was misled into working illegally in Winnipeg based on the promise he would eventually get a work permit.

Ighor Santos, 27, says he was ordered to leave the country after blowing the whistle on the man who recruited him and other foreign nationals for a construction job in the city's Leila North neighbourhood.

Santos said he came to Canada in March 2023 and worked at the site for nearly five months. He and his family first reached out to the authorities later that year.

On May 31, 2024, he went to the border crossing at Emerson, Man., to apply for a valid work permit through another company.

Santos said he provided Canada Border Services Agency officials with information indicating he'd been coaxed into working illegally, but after an interview that went on for several hours, a border agent told him he had to leave the country because he'd broken the law.

"I was, of course, sad because I tried to [do] the right thing … to avoid this to happen to me, because none of this was my intention," Santos said in an interview from São Paulo.

He was unsatisfied, he said, "because at the end of the day, the wrong people, they're still there."

Gurwinder Singh Ahluwalia, 43, of Winnipeg pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized employment of foreign nationals in contravention of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as part of a plea deal that avoided additional counts being brought up against him last week.

He admitted during a provincial court hearing on April 2 to hiring the foreign nationals to work at the Templeton Heights development in the Leila North area, which he managed as general contractor for a construction company during a two-year period starting in 2022.

Court heard at least 14 foreign nationals were illegally employed on the site.

Ahluwalia, who had been living in Canada since moving from India in 2010 and became a Canadian citizen in 2019, was sentenced to 20 months of house arrest and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine, as recommended in the plea deal. The maximum prison sentence for the offence is two years.

The Canada Border Services Agency said in a Tuesday news release that the investigation started in August 2023, after the agency received information about the employment and mistreatment of unauthorized workers. Search warrants for Ahluwalia's home, truck, the construction site and an immigration consulting firm were granted in May 2024.

Last week, court heard that a Brazilian national had come forward to Canada Border Services agents with evidence Ahluwalia had advised him to come to Canada under a visitor visa and work illegally, after he'd asked about opportunities in the country.

Santos said he was the worker who contacted border services. He said he was in his last year of school in Ireland when he contacted Ahluwalia, after a relative told him Ahluwalia was looking for workers.