“Strip searches”, “chains and handcuffs”: the Canadian government is being sued for having “violated the rights” of thousands of migrants by incarcerating them alongside “criminal detainees” while waiting for their situation to be regularized, their lawyers indicated Tuesday.
The allegations are part of a judgment handed down Friday by the Ontario Superior Court, which certifies a class action representing 8,360 people who were detained by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) between 2016 and 2023 in 87 prisons.
Foreign nationals – including asylum seekers – who were not charged with a crime “experienced the same conditions as criminal detainees, including cohabitation with violent offenders, the use of restraints such as chains and handcuffs, strip searches, and severe restrictions on contact and movement,” wrote Judge Benjamin Glustein.
The CBSA can detain migrants if there is concern they will not show up for a future immigration proceeding, if their identity is incorrect or if they pose a danger to public safety.
They can then be sent to one of the agency’s three immigration holding centres, but also be incarcerated in provincial jails, which “violates the detainees’ rights under the Charter of Rights,” according to the lawsuit.
“Immigration detention is administrative detention and should not be punitive in nature,” said lawyers for the plaintiffs, who are seeking CAD 100 million in damages.
Garcia Paez, who was incarcerated for 13 days in 2021, described in a sworn statement his time in prison as “very traumatic,” with a “violent” atmosphere, “drug use” and physical assaults involving other inmates.
“Wearing prison clothes, being confined in a cage and restricted in my movements made me feel extremely isolated, as if I had been stripped of my humanity,” says the man whose asylum application was accepted the following year.
Tyron Richard, who was imprisoned for 18 months in three different prisons, says he experienced “real hell”.
“I had to undress, turn around, bend over, spread my buttocks, have my anus inspected by a guard with a flashlight, and then have a visual inspection below and around my genitals,” he said, noting that he “felt a sense of helplessness.”
The Canadian government, which can still appeal, “will take the time to examine the court’s decision before deciding what to do next,” said Jean-Sébastien Comeau, spokesperson for the Minister of Public Security, on Tuesday.