Hundreds of nonviolent immigration detainees sent to max-security jails as part of ‘abhorrent’ government program

By Brendan KennedyInvestigative Reporter

Thu., Jan. 24, 2019
Canada’s immigration authorities locked up nearly 1,500 nonviolent immigration detainees in maximum-security jails last year, the Star has found.

These detainees have been incarcerated in the most restrictive conditions possible alongside sentenced criminals and those awaiting trial on serious charges.

Ebrahim Toure, pictured here at the Central East Correctional Centre in February 2017, spent the first four-and-a-half of his five-and-a-half years in immigration detention in a maximum-security jail. A year before his eventual release a Superior Court judge ordered his tranfer to a less restrictive immigration holding centre, saying that holding Toure in a maximum-security jail was “grossly disproportionate” to the risk he posed and the reason he was being detained.

Ebrahim Toure, pictured here at the Central East Correctional Centre in February 2017, spent the first four-and-a-half of his five-and-a-half years in immigration detention in a maximum-security jail. A year before his eventual release a Superior Court judge ordered his tranfer to a less restrictive immigration holding centre, saying that holding Toure in a maximum-security jail was “grossly disproportionate” to the risk he posed and the reason he was being detained. (Anne-Marie Jackson / Toronto Star file photo)

While they may have criminal records, the detainees were not considered dangerous by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Almost all were detained solely on the grounds that they were unlikely to appear for their immigration hearing.

A Star analysis of government statistics from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018, found that 80 per cent of immigration detainees held in provincial jails — rather than less restrictive immigration holding centres — were not detained on the grounds that they were dangers to the public. Data from the months since then shows the rate is unchanged. All provincial jails are maximum security.

“It’s abhorrent for the government to be placing people in maximum-security jails that it acknowledges are not a danger,” said Subodh Bharati, an immigration lawyer at the Community and Legal Aid Services Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. Bharati said that by the government’s own description, immigration detention is explicitly administrative and not punitive. “But incarceration in a maximum-security jail is punitive by its very nature.”

Two Superior Court judges have also criticized the practice.

https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2019/01/24/hundreds-of-nonviolent-immigration-detainees-sent-to-max-security-jails-as-part-of-abhorrent-government-program.html

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