Michael Mvogo (born September 14, 1959) is a Cameroonian national who was held in Canadian immigration detention without charges for nearly a decade before deportation because his true identity and country of origin could not be established. He had previously committed crimes in multiple countries and provided several different aliases and backstories to authorities.
While unidentified, he was officially referred to in Canadian documents as "Unknown Man." Canadian media gave him the nickname "The Man With No Name."
Case[]
In 2006, a man was arrested at a Salvation Army homeless shelter in Toronto, Canada, for drug possession after it was discovered he had about $10 worth of crack cocaine on his person. He provided a legitimate United States passport to police issued in 2002. It stated his name was Andrea Jerome Walker and that he was born on January 22, 1973, in Wilmington, Delaware. He had claimed he was born in 1963 and that the DOB on his passport was an error. He had entered Canada on an Amtrak train from New York in April of 2005 with approval to remain in Canada for 9 days. Police noted that the man appeared older than his stated age, and United States authorities canceled his passport after they could not find records of Walker's existence before 2001. The unidentified man was placed into indefinite immigration custody by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA).
Contact was made with authorities worldwide in search of the man's true identity; he was noted to speak fluent English, Spanish, and French. Fingerprints sent to Interpol were matched to eight different individuals who had been arrested in the European Union. One of these was Michael Myogo who claimed to have been born in Kribi, Cameroon, on September 14, 1959. Records confirmed he had been previously arrested in 2004 in Spain for drug trafficking, resisting arrest, and public mischief. Myogo had entered Spain via a flight from the United States and was later deported back there after being convicted of several crimes. CBSA officials initially believed this was an alias, but the man claimed that Spanish authorities had misspelled his name and that he was named Michael Mvogo. Cameroonian officials were initially unable to find records of Mvogo's existence and denied him entry into Cameroon. Fingerprints sent to New York state were matched to a Michael Gee Hearns that claimed to have been born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on September 14, 1966. He stated that this date of birth was incorrect by one year. Records confirmed that the man had served a sentence at Rikers Island Prison on a drug possession charge from 1993. Haitian officials were unable to find records of the man's existence in Haiti and denied him entry into the country. The man later recanted his confession and claimed that the alias Michael Gee was inspired by American musician Master Gee, of whom he was a fan.
In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Council publicly condemned Canadian immigration authorities for the prolonged detention of the unidentified man in solitary confinement without any charges. There was an unsuccessful international campaign to release the man from prison beginning in 2011 that lasted for several years until his true identity was discovered.
Identification[]
After three days of searching, a CBSA liaison discovered Mvogo's birth certificate stub on the last shelf of the court archives of Mvengue, Cameroon. The officer was also able to locate Mvogo's uncle, Gilbert Ateba Mvondo, who confirmed the unknown man's identity. After his identity was confirmed, Mvogo was deported back to Cameroon around August 2015.