The Canadian government is facing a lawsuit for allegedly violating migrants’ rights by detaining them alongside criminal suspects while awaiting the processing of their immigration status, according to the migrants’ lawyers.
One of the detained migrants described his experience as a “living hell,” while another detailed a traumatic atmosphere involving drug use and fights among inmates. Migrants were at times shackled and subjected to strip searches, the lawyers said.
“Immigration detention is administrative detention and should not be punitive in nature,” asserted the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are seeking C$100 million ($73.4 million) in damages.
These allegations of harsh treatment are included in a ruling handed down on Friday by the Superior Court of Ontario, which authorized a class action lawsuit by 8,360 people detained by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) between 2016 and 2023 in 87 prisons.
Justice Benjamin Glustein wrote that foreign nationals — including asylum seekers — who were not accused of a crime “encountered the same conditions as criminal inmates, including co-mingling with violent offenders, use of restraints such as shackles and handcuffs, strip searches, and severe restrictions on contact and movement.”
Border agents can detain migrants if there is a fear that they will not show up for an immigration hearing, if their identity is in doubt, or if they pose a danger to public safety. However, the lawsuit claims that detaining them in provincial jails instead of immigration facilities violates their rights.
Garcia Paez, one of the plaintiffs, described his 13 days in jail in 2021 as traumatic, with a violent atmosphere, drug use, and physical assaults among other detainees.
Tyron Richard, another plaintiff, stated, “It was important to me to bring this lawsuit not just for myself but for the thousands of other immigration detainees who, like me, were incarcerated in provincial prisons and treated as if they were criminals despite not even being accused of a crime.” Richard spent 18 months in a maximum-security prison, describing the experience as a “living hell” and expressing pride in standing up to fight back.
The Canadian government has said it has not yet decided on its next step and retains the option to appeal the ruling.
