Open letter: Canadian government must cancel plans to use federal prisons for immigration detention

May 13, 2024

To: Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau

Minister of Public Safety, Dominic LeBlanc

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Marc Miller

Re: Stop plans to use federal prisons for immigration detention

We are leading Canadian and international organizations serving and working to protect the human rights of migrants and refugee claimants, as well as the thousands of individuals who are already incarcerated across Canada. We are writing to oppose the federal government’s Budget 2024 plans to expand immigration detention into federal prisons, through proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. 

As of May 2024, all ten provinces have decided to end their immigration detention agreements or arrangements with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). As these decisions take effect, people will no longer be incarcerated in provincial jails based solely on immigration grounds. In severing their detention contracts with CBSA, the provinces have clearly indicated their firm opposition to the use of provincial jails for immigration detention. As Alberta’s public safety minister, Mike Ellis, stated in January 2023, “People who come to Canada for a fresh start and a new life deserve a better welcome than a jail cell while paperwork is sorted out.”

In response to Budget 2024’s proposal to expand immigration detention into federal prisons, the Bloc Québécois appealed to the federal government’s “humanity,” stating: “At a time when Canada prides itself on being a welcoming land open to immigrants, locking up immigrants in penitentiary institutions, with no respect for human rights, is nonsense.”

Using federal prisons to incarcerate people in immigration detention is inherently punitive and inconsistent with international human rights standards.

We are deeply concerned by Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s assertion that prisons would be used for “a very small segment of the population,” which he described as “not criminals,” but “high-risk” and often with “severe mental health problems.” In fact, the data from medical literature and research is clear that immigration detention can exacerbate and trigger mental health conditions, particularly when incarceration is prolonged and without end in sight. People in immigration detention can develop anxiety, depression, despair, psychological distress, psychosis, catatonic withdrawal, self-harm and suicidal ideation. The mental-health impacts of immigration detention are so severe that even a relatively short hold in detention can be devastating to the mind and cause long-term – and sometimes permanent – harm.

Over the past several years, CBSA has detained tens of thousands of non-Canadian citizens under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, most commonly because authorities believe they may not appear for an immigration or refugee proceeding. People in immigration detention include, among others, refugee claimants fleeing traumatic experiences and persecution, and persons with mental health conditions. The conditions that people in immigration detention face are profoundly disturbing.

Since 2000, at least 17 people lost their lives in immigration detention; most of them were incarcerated in a jail. Evidence presented at the February 2023 coroner’s inquest into the death of Abdurahman Hassan, a man arbitrarily detained for three years while CBSA was unable to deport him to Somalia, revealed shocking details about ongoing conditions of incarceration in provincial jails, including prolonged use of solitary confinement. The inquest jury’s first recommendation to the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario was to end the use of jails for immigration detention.

We call on the federal government to immediately cancel its plans to use prisons for immigration detention. Instead, it should invest in community-based organizations that provide tailored and compassionate support independently of CBSA, including rights-respecting alternatives to detention, and ultimately end immigration detention across the country.