Home / Over 200 Canadian Children Housed in Toronto Immigration Detention Facility since 2011

Over 200 Canadian Children Housed in Toronto Immigration Detention Facility since 2011

New report urges Canada to implement alternatives to detaining children, family separation 

(Ottawa, February 23, 2017) — Since 2011, Canada has housed more than two hundred Canadian children in detention in Toronto’s Immigration Holding Centre, alongside hundreds of formally detained non-Canadian children, according to a follow-up report released today by the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP). The report recommends that Canada  urgently implement alternatives to detaining children rather than housing them in immigration detention facilities or separating them from their detained parents.

The IHRP interviewed nine detained and formerly detained mothers of Canadian children from the Middle East, West Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. The mothers described the arbitrary and rigid rules of the detention facilities in Toronto and Laval, and how the conditions eroded their capacity to effectively protect and care for their children.

“Canadian children are invisible in Canada’s immigration detention system,” said Samer Muscati, IHRP director. “While all detention is horrible, these children are particularly vulnerable because they lack important legal safeguards, including their own detention review hearings.”

According to figures recently obtained by the IHRP through access to information requests, an average of at least 48 Canadian children were housed in detention each year between 2011 and 2015 in Toronto alone. New figures released by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to the IHRP in February 2017 indicate a significant decrease over the past year, as CBSA has taken some important initial steps to address longstanding problems. However, the IHRP is concerned that the frequency of family separation has not seen a similar reduction, and that analyses of the best interests of the child continue to be inadequate in practice.

The 60-page report, Invisible Citizens: Canadian Children in Immigration Detention, is a follow-up to the IHRP’s September 2016 report on non-Canadian children in immigration detention, “No Life for a Child”: A Roadmap to End Immigration Detention of Children and Family Separation. The new report reiterates that families in detention should be released outright or given access to community-based alternatives to detention, such as reporting obligations, financial deposits, and guarantors.

Invisible Citizens is based on interviews conducted since November 2016 with lawyers, social workers, refugee advocates, mental health experts, as well as detained and formerly detained mothers. The report includes six case studies of Canadian children who were housed in detention or separated from their detained parents in Toronto and Laval. Without exception, the mothers expressed deep anguish about the detrimental consequences of the experience on their children’s physical and mental health.

One of the children profiled in the report, Deavon was four months old when officials detained his mother, Abigail (not their real names), at the Toronto detention facility. Abigail was detained because CBSA suspected that she was a flight risk, and Deavon accompanied her as a “guest” of the facility. According to Abigail, she constantly felt pressured by CBSA to part with her infant son. “But I’m his mom, I’m his caregiver, he’s breastfeeding, how can he leave?” she said. After three months in detention, Abigail was diagnosed with Major Depressive Episode and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “I think they robbed a lot from me and my baby.”

The report builds upon years of advocacy by refugee and child rights groups in Canada that have called on the government to ensure children’s best interests are a primary consideration in decisions that affect them, and ultimately, to end child detention and family separation. International bodies have also repeatedly criticized Canada for its immigration detention practices.

The report notes recent initiatives by Canada’s federal government and CBSA indicating a strong willingness to reform the immigration detention regime, with a particular view to protecting children and addressing mental health issues. The government has also expressed its intention to engage extensively with non-governmental organizations and other civil society stakeholders in the process of revising relevant policy and designing new programs.

Invisible Citizens reaffirms the 11 recommendations of “No Life for a Child,” which aim to ensure that Canada complies with its international human rights obligations. The report also builds upon the recommendations of the IHRP’s 2015 report, “We Have No Rights”: Arbitrary imprisonment and cruel treatment of migrants with mental health issues in Canada. Given the existing discretion under the law, authorities can implement these recommendations in practice even before legislative and regulatory changes are instituted.

“The Canadian government and CBSA continue to take serious steps that have produced some initial points of progress,” said Hanna Gros, IHRP Senior Fellow and author of the report. “But it’s important that they entrench these initial advances into law and practice, so that Canada lives up to its burgeoning reputation as a multicultural safe haven for refugees and migrants.”

READ THE REPORT

Invisible Citizens: Canadian Children in Immigration Detention is available for download here.

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