Detention is not a humane way to treat migrants in need of a home

Migrant justice groups such as the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre welcomed the news in June that New Brunswick will stop jailing people based on their immigration status in the province’s jails.

New Brunswick is joining other Canadian provinces in terminating immigration detention agreements with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Nine people were jailed on immigration-related grounds in New Brunswick’s jails at the end of last year, according to Statistics Canada. Today’s number is not publicly disclosed by governments.

While New Brunswick will stop using its jails for immigration enforcement on February 28, 2024, that doesn’t mean people in New Brunswick are safe from immigration detention.

CBSA can decide to detain someone on immigration-related grounds in New Brunswick or anywhere else in Canada at one of its euphemistically called immigration holding centres in Laval, Québec, Toronto, Ontario, or Surrey, BC. Besides immigration holding centres that operate like medium-security jails, the agency also detains people in federal prisons or prisons in provinces with immigration detention agreements as well as at ports of entry and at RCMP stations.

With the power to arrest, detain and search-and-seize without a warrant, CBSA shockingly does not have an independent civilian oversight body to investigate any misconduct or review or recommend policy changes.

With people dying in CBSA custody and accusations of systemic racism being lodged against the agency, it is long overdue to rein them in.

Since the year 2000, a known 17 people have died in CBSA custody. According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty’s 2021 joint report, titled “I didn’t feel like a human in there,” CBSA’s racial profiling is linked to longer immigration detention periods.

Immigration detainees endure harsh conditions, including solitary confinement and no known release date. Detention periods vary between 48 hours to weeks, months and even years.

Ebrahim Toure, a stateless person, spent five-and-a-half years in detention in Lindsay, Ontario. Before his release, he had endured 69 hearings before Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.

Abdoul Abdi, a man who came to Canada as a child refugee, was jailed at the Madawaska Correctional Regional Centre in St. Hilaire, New Brunswick in 2018 before Canada’s then Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale announced through a tweet that Abdi would be allowed to stay in Canada.

The Government of Canada respects the decision filed on July 13 by the Federal Court concerning Abdoul Abdi. The Government will not pursue deportation for Mr. Abdi.

— Ralph Goodale (@RalphGoodale) July 17, 2018

Despite numerous human rights groups denouncing the practice, immigration detention is on the rise in Canada.

From 2016-2020, more than 32,000 people, including children, had been detained. Most detainees posed no risk to the public, being held because they are considered “unlikely to appear” before an immigration hearing. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty report also noted immigration detainees are being held in part because of presentation of mental health conditions, including suicidal ideation.

Between 2019 and 2020, of the 8,825 people detained on immigration grounds in Canada, 136 were children, 73 under the age of six. Today, the number of children separated from their parents while in CBSA custody is unknown as CBSA has refused to track the number. Canada is violating the rights of children as enshrined in international law.

With the Safe Third Country Agreement being extended this year, we can expect immigration detention to continue to rise and we can expect more migrants to die crossing borders.

The agreement stops migrants seeking entry to Canada via the U.S., a so-called “safe country,” from claiming asylum in the third country and vice versa. Human rights advocates note migrants will continue to cross borders but in more dangerous conditions.

In response to my request to end the Safe Third County Agreement, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino told me I wouldn’t find a more compassionate government and that Canadians need to feel secure in their borders.

To the disappointment of human rights groups, the Supreme Court in June upheld the constitutionality of the agreement in relation to Section 7 (life, liberty and security) in a complicated ruling that at the same time directed the Federal Court of Canada to review the constitutionality of the agreement in relation to Section 15 (equality rights).

Meanwhile, migrants are not only dying crossing the Mexico-U.S border, they are dying crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

Days after Canada extended the Safe Third Country Agreement in March, further sealing the border in response to the Roxham Road border crossings, on March 31, 2023, eight people, including two children under the age of three, drowned in the waters of the St. Lawrence River on Akwesasne territory as they tried to enter the U.S. from Canada.

Over a month before, on February 19, 2023, 45-year-old Jose Leos Cervantes from Mexico, collapsed and died shortly after crossing the border into Vermont from Québec on foot.

A month before that, on January 4, 2023, Fritznel Richard, a 44-year-old Haitian man was found frozen to death in the woods near St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Québec, where he was trying to cross into the U.S. He had been unable to get a work permit in Canada and wanted to try to get legal status in the U.S. and reunite with his wife in Florida.

A year before, on January 19, 2022, an Indian family of four died of exposure, frozen to death, trying to reach the U.S. from the Manitoba border.

Besides making the border more dangerous for migrants, Canada has transferred large numbers of refugees crossing at the Roxham Road crossing in New York-Québec to provinces with no clear plan for their support.

Starting in February, the federal government began transferring asylum seekers to New Brunswick, a province with inadequate refugee legal aid. The transfers concerned refugee advocates who called on both the federal and provincial governments to provide immediate legal aid for the asylum seekers.

Without having adequate legal guidance to file their claims, more than 200 asylum seekers in New Brunswick could fail their refugee claims and end up in the harsh world of the undocumented and detained, a completely avoidable situation had the federal and provincial governments immediately provided adequate resources for refugee legal aid.

Instead, Canada is considering spending millions more to build more immigration holding centres, possibly engaging the private sector in what is a money-making enterprise, according to research by Linda Mussell and Jessica Evans.

Detention is not a humane way to treat people in need of a home.

Rather than throwing migrants fleeing war and other kinds of hardship in detention, let’s provide them with adequate housing, health care, legal aid and community supports as they await decisions on their applications to stay in Canada.

Let’s establish an independent body to oversee and investigate CBSA where immigration detainees can file complaints and third parties can support the complaints.

Let’s end immigration detention and the use of solitary confinement. Let’s rethink borders.

Tracy Glynn is a founding board member of the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre, an organization that supports migrant workers and others with precarious immigration status in New Brunswick.