A newly released Order Paper Question reveals a staggering backlog of arrest warrants for foreign nationals found inadmissible to Canada, including individuals linked to organized crime, national security concerns, and even human rights violations, with many warrants languishing for years without enforcement.

According to the federal response, the government has issued:

• 9,500 warrants for failing to comply with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act

• 292 for criminality

• 13 for organized crime ties

• 4 for national security risks

• 1 for human-rights violations

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And yet, the public is not allowed to know who these people are. Ottawa claims privacy laws prevent the release of names, even when the individuals pose known public-safety risks.

The data gets even worse when you scroll through the supplemental tables. Some arrest warrants have been outstanding for nearly 10 years. Many others have been active for more than 3,000 days without an arrest. Even in the cases where enforcement did occur, several files took over 1,000 days, with others dragging past 2,000 days before anyone was taken into custody.

In an astonishing number of cases, officials simply cancelled the warrants outright, sometimes after letting them sit for over 1,000 days without action.

Buried near the bottom of the documents is the most damning figure: since 2016, there have been 10,051 arrest warrants for inadmissible foreign nationals who have remained on the wanted list for over a year.

The government’s inability — or unwillingness — to execute immigration enforcement on even the most serious files raises profound questions about public safety, border integrity, and whether the system is functioning at all.