Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Canada announced today that all 10 of Canada‘s provinces have committed to ending their immigration detention contracts and agreements with the Canada Border Services Agency, which is a significant victory for immigrant and refugee right. The last remaining state, Newfoundland and Labrador, has then confirmed that it will no longer permit the federal government to prosecute refugees and asylum applicants in local jails.
The two organizations launched the# WelcomeToCanada campaign in October 2021 to urge provinces to stop the practice. The use of municipal prison for immigration confinement is against international human rights laws and harmful to people’s mental health. The federal government may follow the counties and implement effective measures to stop immigration detention across the nation.  ,
The choice of Newfoundland and Labrador is a significant human rights victory, according to Samer Muscati, acting deputy director of Human Rights Watch for the disability rights movement. The federal government may ultimately ensure that the border company will quit using jails for immigration detention once and for all now that all 10 provinces have already terminated their agreements and arrangements for immigration detention.
On the basis of contracts and agreements with provinces, the boundary agency has incarcerated thousands of people on immigration premises in tens of municipal jails across the nation over the past five decades. Conditions in municipal jails are harsh, and these services are essentially punitive. The border company was informed on March 12, 2024, by the Newfound and Labrador state, that provincial prison will no longer be able to detain people detained only under immigration laws as of March 31, 2025. The contracts between the five provinces have already expired following the five-year notice-of-expiration period, with the remaining five provinces ‘ contracts set to expire in March 2025. The boundary agency has attempted to extend the treaties in some regions.
In a report released in 2021, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International documented that Black people, in particular, are held in more stringent conditions and detained for longer times in Canada’s multiculturalism confinement than other prisoners. Throughout the emigration detention operation, people with disabilities also go through discrimination.
People in emigration detention are often handcuffed, shackled, and held with little to no contact with the outside world. With no constitutional cap on the length of immigration confinement, which is one of only a few nations in the Global North, people may be detained for months or years without a clear end in sight.
After arriving in Canada as an asylum person in 2012, Sara Maria Gomez Lopez first-hand saw immigration confinement. She spent three months in British Columbia while the frontier firm held her there. ” I remember that strong pain I felt in jail”, she said. Canada can and must cease multiplying like suffering, saying,” We must replace it with the compassionate embrace that has helped so many who have found refuge in this country. This growth gives me hope that no one will suffer the same pain as I did.
Since the# WelcomeToCanada campaign began, hundreds of advocates, lawyers, healthcare providers, and faith leaders, alongside people with lived experience in immigration detention, as well as dozens of leading social justice organizations, have called on provincial and federal authorities to end the use of provincial jails for immigration detention. More than 30 000 people from across Canada have also written to provincial and federal regulators to express their support for the battle.
In accordance with the agreements and plans, the frontier agency paid provinces hundreds of dollars each day for each emigration detainee incarcerated in a municipal jail. For instance, according to the frontier company, in the fiscal year ending March 2023, the company paid CAD$ 615.80 per day for each person detained in a New Brunswick prison. That same fiscal year, the agency spent$ 82.7 million on detention,  , more than in any of the previous four years.
The border agency has complete discretion under immigration law regarding the location of people in immigration detention, but there is no legal precedent for the agency’s choice to place a person in a provincial jail as opposed to an immigration holding facility. Once agreements and arrangements with provinces come to an end, the organization will no longer have access to provincial jails for immigration detention. Additionally, it has three immigration holding facilities, all of which have strict rules and daily routines, resemble and operate like medium security prisons, and impose punitive measures in response to breaking rules and orders.
Alternatives to detention can be found throughout the nation. The federal government should instead of funding detention facilities or punitive non-cursorship activities like electronic trackers, instead of funding rights- respecting, community-based initiatives run by local nonprofit organizations independent of the border agency.
Ketty Nivyabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, praised the provinces for their decisions to stop locking up refugees and migrants in jails solely on immigration grounds. The federal government is currently under” clear pressure” to end this nation’s rights-violation system.
