Obioma Ebebe and his wife Sonia Gogoh play with their son Jonah. (CBC)

A Charlottetown family faces being broken up this week after the father confessed to immigration authorities he lied to get into the country in 2002.

Canada Border Services intends to deport Obioma Ebebe on Wednesday because he lied about his identity when he came to Canada. He has since married and now has a three-year-old son.

"He's the one that's really being punished," Ebebe told CBC News Monday.

"He's still a little kid and he needs his father. So it's everything. It's hard on him."

Originally from Nigeria, Ebebe had been working in Brazil when he caught a boat to Montreal in the summer of 2002. He didn't have a passport so he lied about his name, saying it was Peter Gogoh, that he was nine years younger and from Sierra Leone.

"The crew and the captain, for them not to throw me off board, I had to tell them a good, like convince them that I'm from a war place or a very difficult place, you know, to enter their ship," he said.

Maritime marriage

From Montreal, Ebebe headed to Halifax where he met and married his wife Sonia in 2003. They moved to P.E.I., and had their son Jonah toward the end of 2005.

'I'm the one that said "I need you to go do this.… The truth will set you free."'— Sonia Ebebe

Sonia never knew the secret her husband was keeping until he confessed one night last spring.

"As his wife, telling him right away, 'You have to go. You have to convince [them of] the truth. This is something I need you to do for me to be OK. For me to get to the OK stage, where I can handle it,'" she said.

"I've got guilt. I'm the one that said 'I need you to go do this … Something has to come out of this. The truth will set you free.' We have to believe that that's true."

The next day he told immigration officials the truth, asking for forgiveness on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. That application was denied in November, and Ebebe is scheduled to be deported Wednesday.

Ebebe's church, Seventh Day Adventist in Charlottetown, has rallied behind him, praying that Immigration will change its mind.

"He was not captured and taken to task and taken to the law," said pastor Bob Lehmann.

"Peter, of his own volition, of his own sense of doing what is right, came forward and admitted to being in Canada illegally."

Ebebe's lawyers have filed an emergency motion to delay Wednesday's deportation. A decision will be released Tuesday.