An immigration lawyer is making plans to retrieve his client from the United States and bring her back to Nova Scotia after receiving word a temporary permit will be granted.

Lee Cohen said he has received word from the federal Immigration Department that his client Nancy Inferrera, 73, can return to Canada on a temporary residency permit that allows her to stay for three years.

“There’s just one more step in the process. It should be a smooth step, but to make sure it’s a smooth step I’m going to go to Calais and get Nancy and Mildred and bring them through the border,” Cohen told the Rick Howe Show Thursday.

Inferrera was forced out of her Guysborough County trailer home Wednesday, where she had been living with her longtime friend Mildred Sanford, 83, since 2008.  

The two moved to N.S. from Massachusetts so that Sanford could return to her home and Inferrera could act as her caregiver.

“You can’t leave a friend when they start to get old, if you get things just out of the clear blue,” Inferrera told the Canadian Press. “What is a friend if you’re going to leave them when they need you the most?”

When Inferrera was deported, Sanford accompanied her over the border to Maine where they waited, hopeful for federal intervention.

Lee Cohen said the deportation was just a matter of law, but it spurred an outpouring of response from Canadians across the country.

“I didn’t really understand what viral meant until I got up this morning. The outpouring by Nova Scotians and Canadians about how wrong this was went right across the country,” said Guysborough Country warden Lloyd Hines.

While Cohen said the response from citizens may have been one factor in the government’s decision to grant temporary residency, he said Inferrera’s act of honouring the deportation order bodes well for her immigration case.

A spokesperson from the Immigration Department said she could not confirm the government’s decision to grant Inferrera a temporary residency permit, without the woman’s consent.