While we despair at the bureaucratic bureaucracy of Canadian immigration services reserved for Ukrainian civilians fleeing their country at war, let us know that, every year, thousands of people arriving in Canada in search of a better life find themselves literally trapped .
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
Migrants are fleeing war, repression, humanitarian and climatic crises, economic stagnation. Some are themselves victims of repression because of their ideas, their identity, their opposition. Imagine the chasm that invades them when they see themselves detained in a prison establishment, sometimes at maximum security.
Thousands of migrants find themselves behind bars every year for administrative reasons, i.e. 8,825 in 2019-2020. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is responsible for managing detentions. However, thanks to agreements with the provinces, hundreds of migrants are sent to provincial prisons. These detentions raise serious human rights issues, including attacks on dignity, health and safety, in which Quebec is complicit.
On three occasions during the fall, Amnesty International questioned the Minister of Public Security as well as the Premier of Quebec. 1er February, Line Fortin, Associate Deputy Minister of the Directorate General of Correctional Services, replied to Amnesty, in a letter of rare insensitivity, that the “conditions of detention [des personnes migrantes] do not differ from other incarcerated persons and [qu’]they are subject to the same rules”, affirming that “the fundamental rights of each person in our care remain the basis of our interventions”.
This is what worries us. These people should not be incarcerated. They are not charged with any crime. They seek asylum in Canada.
Amnesty International Canada and Human Rights Watch (HRW) jointly conducted an investigation, from February 2020 to March 2021, into the detention of migrant persons and its effect on their mental health. Studies show that immigration detention exacerbates existing psychosocial disabilities and triggers new ones, such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
Migrant detainees are under constant surveillance by uniformed guards and cameras, they are handcuffed and searched, including stripped, subjected to solitary confinement. They suffer the violence of the guards and their fellow prisoners. Communication with loved ones, legal representatives and community supports is very limited. Personal effects such as cell phones and electronic devices are prohibited. However, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has clearly stated that “all detained migrant persons must be able to communicate with the outside world and their relatives, including by telephone or email”.
A Montreal lawyer, interviewed as part of our investigation, claimed to have observed that migrant detainees expressing suicidal thoughts were transferred to a provincial prison. It was also noted that migrant persons detained in provincial prisons were generally “black men incarcerated for risk of absconding”.
From 2017 to 2020, around 5,400 migrant people were detained in provincial prisons. In the 2019-2020 fiscal year alone, 1,932 of them were incarcerated in provincial prisons, many of which are maximum security institutions. Since the start of the pandemic, almost half of them have been there, compared to a fifth previously.
It turns out that Quebec is the second province with the highest number of migrant detainees and migrant children placed in detention. “During the 2019-2020 financial year, a total of 138 children spent time in detention, including 73 children under the age of 6, […]. The vast majority of these children (94%) were detained in Quebec. »
Contrary to commonly held misconceptions, these people do not pose a threat to public safety. Between April 2016 and March 2020, 94% of them were detained for administrative reasons, most often because they were deemed to be at risk of not appearing for a hearing.
Our investigation has allowed us to discover that since 2016, more than 300 migrant people have been kept in detention for more than a year. A man with psychosocial disabilities was detained for more than 11 years because authorities were unable to establish his identity.
No human being should, under any circumstances, be treated in a punitive manner for reasons related to immigration. Quebec must not be complicit in a system that dehumanizes. As one lawyer we interviewed put it: “If we believe that migrants in detention can feel pain, anxiety, love and hope like us, incarceration cannot be a solution. It is only possible if we consider that they are less human than us. »
Amnesty International is therefore once again urging the Government of Quebec to cancel its agreement with the Canada Border Services Agency and to no longer make its provincial prisons available. Quebec would thus contribute to pressuring the federal government to abolish the arbitrary and inhuman detention of migrants, not only in provincial prisons, but also in all Canadian establishments, including the federal immigration holding centres, designed especially for this.
Also questioned by Amnesty and HRW, the government of British Columbia confirmed that it was going to revise its contract with the federal government relating to the administrative detention of migrants.