Canada Border Services Agency figures from 2019 show 68 per cent of those detained for 270 days or longer were from African countries or the Caribbean, according to a new study.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Canada’s immigration detention system disproportionately ensnares people from African and Caribbean countries, a new study says.
The report is the first comprehensive analysis of race and the country’s immigration detention system, compiled by a research team that included Toronto-based lawyers and academics at the University of British Columbia. It is based on Canada Border Services Agency data and 50 interviews with detainees, their legal representatives, and front-line service providers.
While the average stint in immigration detention in 2019 was two weeks, CBSA figures from that year show 68 per cent of those detained for 270 days or longer were from African countries or the Caribbean, according to the study.
Canada is one of the few Western countries that does not place time limits on immigration detention stays, the report says.
The study is being released at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump undertakes a massive immigration crackdown that has seen a record number of people placed in detention.
According to the Canadian study: “Racialized people, and Black men in particular, bear the brunt of the system’s harshest conditions and encounter systemic barriers to fair treatment and timely release.”
Canada collects data on immigration detention by country of origin but not race. The report notes that a person’s home country is not an “effective proxy” for their race, leaving issues of discrimination in Canada’s detention system “largely invisible and unaddressed.”
In interviews conducted for the report, detainees as well lawyers and other service providers such as mental health professionals described experiences with racism in the immigration detention system. Some lawyers noted that their clients were almost always Black, said their clients had been called racist epithets by prison guards, or that their bondspeople were more heavily scrutinized if they were Black.
“For virtually every sort of individual that we interviewed … there was a consensus that race and racism played a factor in the way in which the system operated,” said Prasanna Balasundaram, a co-author of the report and director of legal clinic Downtown Legal Services at the University of Toronto.
CBSA data cited in the report and obtained by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch under freedom-of-information laws show that in 2019, the majority of detainees held for a month or longer were from African and Caribbean countries.
Publicly available data from the CBSA and the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate that the overall number of people held in immigration detention, as well as the length of their detention, has declined in recent years: the vast majority of detainees are released within 30 days, the study notes.
However, over the past decade, nearly 60,000 people – including hundreds of children – have been placed in immigration detention, the study’s analysis of Canada Border Services Agency data found.
The CBSA can detain non-citizens, including permanent residents and foreign nationals, who are believed to be inadmissible to Canada. The factors the border agency considers include whether the person may pose a public-safety risk or is a possible flight risk.
Over that past decade, fewer than 10 per cent of immigration detainees were arrested because they were deemed a danger to the public or because of serious criminality, the data show.
The same proportion were held because of questions about their identity documents or because a border agent needed more information to complete an immigration examination.
The vast majority – around 80 per cent – were held because border agents deemed them unlikely to appear at future immigration proceedings.
Nana Yanful, a Toronto-based lawyer and one of the report’s authors, said these determinations are essentially credibility findings where “bias can creep in.”
Efrat Arbel, one of the report’s authors and an associate professor at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law, says Canada has robust alternatives to detention programs for non-citizens suspected of immigration violations.
“If there is no threat to public safety, why are people being deprived of liberty in these onerous conditions of confinement for indeterminate amounts of time?” she said.
Black and racialized non-citizens are more likely to be funnelled into the immigration detention system because they are more likely to experience discrimination in other aspects of their life, like disproportionate traffic stops, the report says.
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The CBSA, which has jurisdiction over the first 48 hours of non-citizens’ arrest and detention, is the only major law-enforcement agency in Canada without independent civilian oversight, the report notes. Ottawa passed a bill in 2024 to create such a body, but it has yet to be established.
That is particularly concerning given the federal government has signalled its intent to ramp up immigration enforcement, Ms. Yanful said.
After detainees’ initial arrest, the immigration division of the Immigration and Refugee Board conducts detention-review hearings at regular intervals to decide whether someone’s continued detention is justified.
But the report notes that challenging detention-review decisions is difficult and many detainees struggle to access legal representation, particularly because legal-aid funding for immigration matters varies by province, noted Prof. Arbel.
Among the recommendations made by the report are a national, independent review of the immigration detention system, publicizing disaggregated data on the basis of race on all aspects of immigration detention, expanding alternatives to detention programs, and a gradual abolition of detention as a tool of immigration enforcement.