Jonathon Nicola was arrested by Canadian border officials recently for trying to pass at a high schooler at Catholic Central High School in Windsor, Canada. One of the reasons why is Nicola is actually closer to 30 years old.
Over the last six months, Nicola attended Catholic Central High School and posed as a teenager. His role playing eventually landed him on the high school basketball team, where he became a star.
The Canada Border Services Agency said Wednesday, Nicola was arrested to reportedly contravening the Immigration Refugee Protection act. The agency didn’t go into detail on what exactly Nicola is accused of because he does have a Canadian student visa, according to the Windsor Star.
“There’s really not a whole lot to say,” spokesman Stephen Fields told the Windsor Star. “Because of the fact this is a matter that’s still outstanding before the federal authorities, obviously we can’t really comment on it. Beyond that there’s not a whole lot to say.”
“Generally I can tell you that we have a system of checks and balances in place that whenever international students are coming into any of our schools,” Fields said. “We make sure that they have all of the necessary government documentation that they require in order to be in one of our schools.”
Fields later told the Windsor Star he wouldn’t say if the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School board was going to keep students and parents updated about the situation. The one issue here is they would most likely prefer to control the message and story and by not speaking up, the media will now do that for them.
“Again, generally speaking, if we felt at any time that there is any kind of threat to any of our students at any of our schools, then we would act appropriately,” said Fields.
Nicola doesn’t necessarily standout for being older than the rest when it comes to basketball. He’s six-foot-nine and weighs 202 pounds, so he’s built like a star basketball player. He was attending Catholic Central under the assumption he was a 17-year-old eleventh grade student.
His housing situation is another grey area that seems fishy. Nicola was living with his head coach Pete Cusumano through a program called Canada Homestay. The purpose of the program is to find homes for foreign students in the area. Cusumano told the Windsor Star he wasn’t allowed to talk about the situation.
Nicola told the star back in January he arrived in Windsor on November 22, 2015, three days before his “17th birthday” from South Sudan.
“A few of my friends know of my background, how we live over there,” he said in January. “I don’t know how many of them have a clue of how it is in Africa.”
The 30-year-old said the process of obtaining a Canadian student visa took six months. That’s the same amount of time it took for people to realize he was 30-years-old and not who he said he was exactly.
[Windsor Star/Photo: Windsor Star]
