Amnesty International Canada, Human Rights Watch urge Ottawa to follow suit
Amnesty International Canada and Human Rights Watch called the end of immigration detention in provincial correctional facilities across the country a significant human rights victory for affirming the dignity and rights of migrants and refugees coming to Canada.
According to the two human rights organizations, on Sept. 14, Ontario became the final Canadian province to stop the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) from keeping migrants and asylum seekers in provincial jails based on administrative grounds. The CBSA said Ontario’s provincial correctional facilities were no longer incarcerating such individuals as of Sept. 15.
In a news release, the human rights organizations noted that Ontario’s provincial jails have historically recorded the most immigration detainees compared with other provinces.
“We thank the provinces for ending the cruel, discriminatory practice of holding people in administrative immigration detention in their jails,” said Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, in the news release.
The human rights organizations urged the federal government to immediately follow the provinces’ examples, strive to scrap immigration detention, cease expanding federal prisons, and improve humane and community-based alternatives that uphold people’s rights and the country’s international obligations.
“There is now even more pressure for the federal government to do the right thing and stop this rights-violating system across the country,” said Samer Muscati, disability rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch, in the news release.
“People seeking safety and opportunity in Canada deserve respect – not jail – as they work to build new lives here,” Nivyabandi added.
Advocacy efforts
Nivyabandi acknowledged that BC was Canada’s first province to announce its intention to cancel its immigration detention contract with the CBSA upon the urging of advocates and those with lived experience of immigration detention.
“By showing leadership and not waiting for other provinces to do the right thing, British Columbia set in motion a movement toward justice that has rippled across Canada,” Nivyabandi said.
In the news release, Amnesty International Canada and Human Rights Watch dubbed the practice of using provincial correctional facilities for immigration detainees punitive, contradictory to international human rights standards, and harmful to mental health.
In October 2021, the two human rights organizations commenced the #WelcomeToCanada campaign, which called for Canada’s provinces to abolish the practice.
The organizations said many advocates, lawyers, healthcare providers, faith leaders, people with lived experience, government officials, and social justice organizations have since echoed this plea, with over 30,000 individuals across the country writing to authorities in support of the initiative.
The organizations noted that a 2023 coroner’s inquest into the 2015 death of Abdurahman Hassan shed light on provincial facilities’ conditions and heightened scrutiny into this practice.
A 2021 report revealed that provincial jails incarcerated Black men and other racialized individuals longer and more restrictively compared with other detainees, while people with disabilities faced discrimination during immigration detention.
Last March, the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities asked Canada to safeguard the rights to legal capacity of people with disabilities in immigration detention and abolish the practice in general.
However, as Amnesty International Canada and Human Rights Watch noted, the CBSA started detaining individuals at a “temporary designated immigrant station” at a federal prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec, last July.
In August, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published a report calling attention to Canada’s plans to hold immigration detainees in federal correctional facilities.
