A man in Calgary, Canada, is appealing against the revoke of his passport after he tried to help his sister in Sri Lanka escape the country using false documents, the Calgary Herald reports.

De Hoedt (an assumed name) is said to be a Canadian citizen, originally from the Dutch Burgher Community in Sri Lanka, who now lives in northeast Calgary.

In April 2013, he was caught in Japan trying to help his sister, who remains in Sri Lanka, enter Canada using false documentation. His passport was revoked, a decision that de Hoedt, 42, is now appealing through the Federal Court of Canada because he felt he had no choice. But every day spent awaiting a ruling, he fears the worst.

“I’m scared,” de Hoedt told the Calgary Herald. “I want to go and help my sister. She’s in very bad shape.”

As per his story, De Hoedt’s family has been troubled since Sri Lanka’s Black July riots of 1983, when tension between the rebel group Tamil Tigers and the Sinhalese government resulted in the looting and killing of hundreds of Tamils by Sinhalese mobs. The conflict gave way to a bloody, decades-long civil war.

At the time, de Hoedt lived in the nation’s capital, Colombo, with his grandparents, parents, brother and sister, witnessing the violence first-hand.

De Hoedt moved to Dubai and then, in 2000, to Canada under a skills program. His parents and brother immigrated to Canada as refugees. Only his sister, a schoolteacher, remained in Sri Lanka. According to de Hoedt, She didn’t apply for refugee status because she was afraid to leave the country, which is one of the requirements.

The siblings had been stopped while boarding a flight in Tokyo’s Narita Airport. According to him, the last time de Hoedt saw his sister, she was being handcuffed.

While she was deported to Sri Lanka, de Hoedt was sent back to Canada and questioned for hours by the Canada Border Services Agency. Though he has not been criminally charged, his passport was revoked under the Canadian Passport Order, which only requires there be enough evidence to show that the passport was “used in the commission of an act or omission that may constitute an indictable offence in Canada” based on a balance of probabilities.

It’s an administrative process that sidesteps the burden of proof required in criminal proceedings, de Hoedt’s lawyer, Tara Kyluik has told Calgary Herald. In this case, the act de Hoedt allegedly committed — human smuggling — wasn’t revealed to him until he began a judicial review.