Senators call for end to detention of children in immigration cases
An infant speaks his first words in a detention facility, echoing the words used by guards throughout the day. A child witnesses the humiliation of her parents being cuffed, imprisoned and hauled off before her eyes. A teenager fleeing abduction and imprisonment lands after a flight for his life and is immediately thrown back in a cell. A mother, detained and separated from her children, becomes suicidal and decides it would have been better to die back home.
These aren’t stories from some war zone halfway across the planet — this is happening in Canada. Immigration experts told these horror stories at a panel discussion hosted by Senators Victor Oh and Mobina Jaffer on April 12, 2017. The panel was held in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); participants called for an end to the practice of holding children in immigration detention facilities.
“One child in detention is too many,” Senator Oh said.
Right now, children are either being held in immigrant detention facilities throughout the country or have been stripped of their parents who are being detained without a thought for the impact on the children. Between 2015 and 2016, at least 200 minors were housed in immigration detention facilities for an average stay of two weeks. More than three quarters of them were under six years of age. These children are detained for administrative rather than criminal reasons, including being unable to prove their identity or being considered unlikely to appear for examination to sort out their immigration status.
“Even a short period behind bars can have a long-lasting impact on a child,” Senator Oh said. He recently visited the Immigration Holding Centre in Toronto where he saw firsthand the conditions under which children were being detained. He also had the chance to speak with two children who were previously in detention and told him how stressful and traumatic this experience had been.
“What had these children done that justified being deprived of their freedom? Most of us would agree that children should not be punished for the actions of their parents.”
Senator Oh likened the facility to a prison despite efforts to create play spaces for children. Indeed, even with an additional investment of $138 million by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to improve conditions for detained immigrants only 3% of that amount has gone into finding alternatives to putting people behind bars. And while a larger share is going to improving health services, this ignores the reality that detention is most often the cause of deteriorating health in the first place. Symptoms found in detained children include mutism, sleep difficulties, food refusal and traumatic re-enactments.
If Canada is to live up to its reputation as a global human rights champion, then deep introspection or even a paradigm shift is required. Canadians should ask themselves: how should we be treating non-citizens, especially when they’re children? How can borders be protected in a more humane way, especially considering the still-unfolding refugee crisis? One thing is for certain: it’s time to drop detention as a default tool.
“We can no longer say, ‘We welcome refugees, but we detain refugee children,’” Senator Jaffer said.
“If we want to say that we welcome refugees, we must first put an end to child detention by our immigration officials.”
At the core of any solution is promoting what panelist Rana Khan, a UNHCR legal officer, called “an ethic of care — not enforcement — that guides all interactions with asylum seeking and migrant children.” Khan said a 'best-interests-of-the-child assessment' should be conducted prior to any decision to detain a child but such a process does not currently exist.
Panelists agreed that Canada needs to identify and adopt best practices such as increasing mental health and cultural sensitivity training for CBSA officers and developing care alternatives to detention, such as foster families within the community of origin of a child that might be separated from his or her parents.
While such changes could actually be done easily with the support of the federal government and the CBSA, to get the wheels moving broad engagement is needed — from health professionals to education experts.
Panelist Marian Shermarke from Centre de santé et de services sociaux de la Montagne left the room with a powerful thought: if we can send people to the moon then we can get these children out of jail.
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Senators call for end to detention of children in immigration cases
An infant speaks his first words in a detention facility, echoing the words used by guards throughout the day. A child witnesses the humiliation of her parents being cuffed, imprisoned and hauled off before her eyes. A teenager fleeing abduction and imprisonment lands after a flight for his life and is immediately thrown back in a cell. A mother, detained and separated from her children, becomes suicidal and decides it would have been better to die back home.
These aren’t stories from some war zone halfway across the planet — this is happening in Canada. Immigration experts told these horror stories at a panel discussion hosted by Senators Victor Oh and Mobina Jaffer on April 12, 2017. The panel was held in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); participants called for an end to the practice of holding children in immigration detention facilities.
“One child in detention is too many,” Senator Oh said.
Right now, children are either being held in immigrant detention facilities throughout the country or have been stripped of their parents who are being detained without a thought for the impact on the children. Between 2015 and 2016, at least 200 minors were housed in immigration detention facilities for an average stay of two weeks. More than three quarters of them were under six years of age. These children are detained for administrative rather than criminal reasons, including being unable to prove their identity or being considered unlikely to appear for examination to sort out their immigration status.
“Even a short period behind bars can have a long-lasting impact on a child,” Senator Oh said. He recently visited the Immigration Holding Centre in Toronto where he saw firsthand the conditions under which children were being detained. He also had the chance to speak with two children who were previously in detention and told him how stressful and traumatic this experience had been.
“What had these children done that justified being deprived of their freedom? Most of us would agree that children should not be punished for the actions of their parents.”
Senator Oh likened the facility to a prison despite efforts to create play spaces for children. Indeed, even with an additional investment of $138 million by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to improve conditions for detained immigrants only 3% of that amount has gone into finding alternatives to putting people behind bars. And while a larger share is going to improving health services, this ignores the reality that detention is most often the cause of deteriorating health in the first place. Symptoms found in detained children include mutism, sleep difficulties, food refusal and traumatic re-enactments.
If Canada is to live up to its reputation as a global human rights champion, then deep introspection or even a paradigm shift is required. Canadians should ask themselves: how should we be treating non-citizens, especially when they’re children? How can borders be protected in a more humane way, especially considering the still-unfolding refugee crisis? One thing is for certain: it’s time to drop detention as a default tool.
“We can no longer say, ‘We welcome refugees, but we detain refugee children,’” Senator Jaffer said.
“If we want to say that we welcome refugees, we must first put an end to child detention by our immigration officials.”
At the core of any solution is promoting what panelist Rana Khan, a UNHCR legal officer, called “an ethic of care — not enforcement — that guides all interactions with asylum seeking and migrant children.” Khan said a 'best-interests-of-the-child assessment' should be conducted prior to any decision to detain a child but such a process does not currently exist.
Panelists agreed that Canada needs to identify and adopt best practices such as increasing mental health and cultural sensitivity training for CBSA officers and developing care alternatives to detention, such as foster families within the community of origin of a child that might be separated from his or her parents.
While such changes could actually be done easily with the support of the federal government and the CBSA, to get the wheels moving broad engagement is needed — from health professionals to education experts.
Panelist Marian Shermarke from Centre de santé et de services sociaux de la Montagne left the room with a powerful thought: if we can send people to the moon then we can get these children out of jail.