The UN Told Canada to Stop Detaining Migrants Indefinitely and Without Charge

A protest outside of a jail in Lindsey, Ontario where many migrant detainees are being held. Image via End Immigration Detention.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called on Canada to release an immigrant jailed for eight years without charge, and to set a maximum time limit for this type of detainment.

Michael Mvogo has been in jail for eight years because the government can’t figure out how to deport him. He arrived in Canada in 2005 with a fake U.S. passport but admitted years later to being from Cameroon. The U.S., Cameroon, Haiti, and Guinea have all said ‘no’ to Canada’s requests they take Mvogo in. Mvogo is held under laws that let Canada detain migrants who they can’t identify, or who pose a “flight risk.” There is no time limit on how long someone like Mvogo can be jailed.

Last year alone, 10,088 people were detained this way, according to Pierre Deveau, a Canadian Border Agency Services spokesperson. Detention “should be the last resort and should be permissible only for the shortest period of time,” the UN opinion said. “Alternatives to detention should be sought wherever possible.”

The UN opinion has no legal bearing in Canada, Deveau pointed out. “Canadian officials will carefully review this opinion and recommendations and will respond in due course,” he said in an email to VICE. According to Syed Hussan of End Immigration Detention, the UN opinion didn't come out until Canada was given multiple chances to respond.

In the past ten years, about 80,000 people have been imprisoned this way, said Hussan. His organization  End Immigration Detention filed the complaint to the UN on Mvogo's behalf, as part of a widespread strike against the detention system. (The government response to the strike was to deport a few of the key organizers, move others to different prisons across Ontario, and put those on hunger strike in solitary confinement, Hussan said.) There are jailed migrants in over 142 facilities across the country, including maximum-security prisons.

None of the reasons Canada is using to justify Mvogo’s detention are legitimate, the UN said. He should be released immediately and compensated for the eight years of his life lost, the body recommended.

Instead of releasing Mvogo, the Canadian government hit back at the UN. “It is time the UN and its committees turn full attention to the true humanitarian crises of the world rather than spending time and resources scrutinizing modern, rights-based democracies,” a Public Safety spokesperson told The Canadian Press.

By rejecting UN recommendations, Hussan said Canada “is choosing to continue to be a rogue nation.”

In the U.S. and across Europe, there’s a time limit on immigration detention. So if the government can’t deport a person within, say 90 days, they have to release them. This is one of the stipulations the UN said Canada should add to their program. On top of that, the government should also create a proper judicial review process for deportation and detention decisions.

Currently, any migrants who fail to meet our complex immigration requirements can be detained if the government can’t verify their identity, or thinks they may not show up to be deported. Every month, the jailed person gets to appear before an appointed member of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s Immigration Division, where they have about a 15 percent chance of being released. This is how the government sidesteps putting a time limit on detention—they insist they’re only really detaining people for one month at a time. Months add up though, and once you’ve been held for more than six months, your chance of being released falls to almost zero.

You can appeal to the Federal Court (if they grant you permission to do so) but if you win there, that simply means you get to go back to the administrative review and ask them to reconsider their decision. Mvogo has never been granted permission to appeal. “It’s such a broken system that the UN actually approached it as if there was no judicial review,” Hussan said.

In recent years, the government has given itself more power to take away people’s immigration status while increasing deportation and detention for those without it, according to a report from End Immigration Detention. The Canadian Border Service Agency’s budget for immigration enforcement more than doubled—from $91 million to $198 million—in only two years. While cutting funds to settlement agencies that help immigrants, the government’s putting more money into catching those who break the rules and locking them up.

“It’s a continued disgrace,” Hussan said. “Living without status in this country is under administrative law, it’s equivalent to something like a parking permit. The fact that the response is deportation is abhorrent… but then on top of deportation to indefinitely detain people? It should be impossible… there’s no trial. There’s no end in sight.”

@emmapaling