Canada Border Services Agency has become more heavy handed in dealing with migrants with little or no accountability.

Migrants in Canada caught in legal ‘black hole:’ report

COLIN PERKEL

TORONTO — The Canadian Press

Published Thursday, Jun. 18, 2015 6:53AM EDT

Last updated Thursday, Jun. 18, 2015 11:49AM EDT

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Canada’s rising detention of non-criminal foreigners in maximum-security prisons amounts to arbitrary, cruel and inhumane treatment that violates international obligations, a disturbing new report concludes.

The report by the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program finds that Canada Border Services Agency has become more heavy handed in dealing with migrants with little or no accountability.

Renu Mandhane, a criminal lawyer and the program’s executive director, said the report reveals “shocking gaps” in the rule of law.

“A CBSA officer essentially has the discretion to determine that somebody should be held in maximum-security jail conditions,” Mandhane said Wednesday in an interview.

“It was really surprising to me...that decision was totally discretionary and also not subject to any rules.”

The report, called “We Have No Rights”, concludes incarceration can have a catastrophic impact on migrants’ mental health. It contains harrowing profiles of detainees imprisoned for as long as eight years who talk of a lack of access to support services, confinement in cold windowless cells, their despair.

“They treat us like garbage,” one inmate told researchers. “We had no rights at all.”

Figures show Canada detained more than 7,300 migrants at a cost of more than $50-million in 2013. About one third were incarcerated in jails, even though few might be considered criminals. A Red Cross report found more than 2,000 foreigners in Ontario jails in 2012.

Reg Williams, a director of CBSA immigration enforcement from 2004 until 2012, said the agency has become increasingly “paramilitaristic” with an emphasis on force rather than co-operation.

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