300 Georgia Street. In the heart of famously multicultural Vancouver B.C., lies one of the city’s most beloved and beautiful landmarks – the 6-story tall, Vancouver Public Library.
Looming above the shelves of books, laughing kids, and community programs – many of which are geared towards welcoming non-English speaking immigrants – is an unassuming tower in the shared library building complex, overlooking the city and casting its shadow on the ever-welcoming VPL. The tower is benevolently marked with nothing more than “Government of Canada” at the entrance – so what lies within?
This government tower houses a prison-like detention facility; temporarily holding non-citizens en-route to holding cells underneath YVR airport or provincial jails.
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While researching the ins and outs of immigration detention in Vancouver, I came across a story and testimony of a particular migrant, an international student completing his undergraduate degree under a valid study visa in BC. This migrant recounted an event from last year, where he was taken from his home and imprisoned at the immigration detention facility at the 300 Georgia Street building complex at Library Square, and later, moved to the Vancouver Jail.
All without trial. Or even a hearing with the Immigration and Refugee Board.
I will keep the source anonymous for safety reasons, but after interviewing a close friend of his, it was clear that the only “real” criminal charges that justified this international student’s arrest and detainment was his skin color, religion, and first and last name. One of which is, Mohammed.
Interview (*Names have been changed for security reasons*)
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Anon: So it was his best friend that ended up telling me what happened. One day last year, two men knocked on his door, and when he opened the door, they said they were from the Canadian government. They asked him to come with them, and so he did.
[Mohammed was taken to the immigration detention temporary holding facility at 300 Georgia St. He was later moved to the downtown Vancouver Jail.]
They took him and they kept him for what he claims to have been 2 to 3 days. Overnight. And he didn’t have access to a lawyer.
They told him that the reason that he was there was because he has a very common name…that also, is like, a very Muslim sounding name, one that can be incriminating in a lot of spaces.
They told him they were looking for someone [under that specific name], on charges of homegrown terrorism in the West Coast. They were questioning him to see if he had any relationship to said person.
[Mohammed] denied any connections to any kind of terrorist activities. He was later released….and after he had been released he told his friends what had happened. He was in a state of complete shock. In total disbelief, he didn’t really know what had happened to him.
They also kept his passport so that he ostensibly wouldn’t skip town. And he didn’t have a Canadian passport – he was an international student.
When he received his passport back, I think something like a week later, he skipped town. Just never returned, never got back in to contact with anyone in Vancouver.
Interviewer: They took his passport while he was detained? Is that correct?
Anon: They took his passport when they released him. They were holding on to it, essentially so that he wouldn’t take it and leave.
Interviewer: What was it like? Did he have access to the Internet or any phones or anything like that?
Anon: No, he didn’t have access to Internet or the phone.
Interviewer: Ok and then usually immigration detainees are not entitled to actual trials conducted by qualified, legitimate judges, but there is a sort of formal immigration hearing – conducted by immigration officials (sometimes even overseen by former CBSA officers). Was he given a hearing?
Anon: No. The biggest thing that stuck out to me about this incident, was not only the detention obviously, but was the fact that it was definitely because of his name. That was a big part of why he was taken. His name.
Interviewer: And I just want to clarify – was he a racialized person?
Anon: Yeah. He was an international student, he was from Africa.
Interviewer: Or…. What I mean is – was he Black?
Anon: Yes. He was Black. Very dark skin. And his name was Mohammed.
……….
(Off-mic): Interviewer: That alone is a criminal sentence in Canada isn’t it?
Anon: Yep, that alone will do it.
………
Anon: I mean, it’s just horrifying. When I found out I was just…. there’s just no….it’s actually surreal. Like even when I tell the story, every time… -it’s just heartbreaking.
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If you’re thinking that [Mohammed’s] story is a unique exception in terms of immigration detention – that’s what I thought too at first. Until I talked to lawyers and experts in the field, and found out that his treatment was perfectly in line with the current policies of Canada’s official immigration detainment system.
So, how exactly do migrants in Canada get themselves in to positions where they are ultimately put into indefinite immigration detention?
In Canada, it is legal to detain non-citizens—including children—without formal trial or criminal charges. Immigrants, International Students, Permanent Residents, Refugees, and Undocumented peoples can all be subject to being held in indefinite immigration detention (think incarceration but without a stated length of detention, trial, or judges or a jury weighing in).
Canada is one of the few countries of the world that allows indefinite detention of migrants (the United States only implemented indefinite detention in 2017 under President Trump). Migrants across Canada are also often times held in provincial jails where they are mixed in with the general criminal populations. In other words, an individual who commits rape or murder will know how long they will be held in prison after their trial, and meanwhile a migrant will neither receive a trial or a detention timeline. This treatment has been condemned by the United Nations repeatedly – and still no signs of reform yet.
A non-citizen can be detained for one of 3 reasons:
- Posing a perceived threat to national security
- Being deemed as a “flight risk” (i.e. any non-citizen who expresses unwillingness to be deported)
- Or authorities’ inability to prove a particular individual identity (this can be cited as a reason even if an individual has legitimate papers of identification from a foreign country)
Any of these reasons can be cited arbitrarily – even in the presence of identification papers, or no concrete evidence of posing a security risk. It is often up to the discretion of any individual Canada Border Services Agent to cite a reason.
“When it comes to public accountability CBSA is the largest law enforcement agency in Canada that has no independent, civilian oversight. And that’s been a problem since it’s post 9/11 inception. If you look at the RCMP, the VPD, they all have civilian complaint oversights. CBSA has none.” – Peter Edelmann, Edelman and Co. Law offices.
Immigration detentions are by and large conducted at the completely independent discretion of CBSA. The organization itself, since it’s post-9/11 creation, is an unchecked, rogue, law-enforcement agency – given vast powers, powers far greater than that of other law enforcement agencies.
The 300 Georgia Street facility, where my anonymous source was detained for a few hours before being moved to an overnight stay at the Vancouver Jail, is merely a temporary holding facility where migrants are usually not held overnight and are instead held while awaiting hearings at the nearby IRB – Immigration and Refugee Board. Once the facility closes at 4pm on weekdays, detainees are generally moved to the nearby Vancouver Jail. For long term detentions, they are put into provincial correctional centers.
In addition to the 300 Georgia Street facility, Vancouver has a second temporary immigration detention centre – this one is in the underground of the YVR airport. This facility has a capacity of about 12-24 beds, it’s underground, there’s no daylight, and just like at it’s 300 Georgia St. counterpart, detainees have no access to internet or phones. To top it all off, the facility is under the contract of a private security firm – no civilian oversights, and no direct jurisdiction from governmental authorities. The general public does not have access to inside conditions or numbers of detainees. How’s that for a Kafkaesque prison?
Immigrants in this facility are completely cut off – despite the fact that they are not criminals, and that they are not technically being “punished” under the law, and yet – these conditions are worse than those in many prisons.
The YVR holding centre is also infamously known as the place of death of Lucia Vega Jimenez – an undocumented Mexican migrant who committed suicide in a cell in 2015, and whose death CBSA attempted to hide from the public and the media, before the coroner’s office leaked news of her death to the local press.
In many cities -LaValle, Quebec for example – despite having permanent immigration detention centers, migrants are often threatened with and moved to provincial jails if they fail to comply to authorities’ standards. In other words,migrants who do not have criminal charges nor have undergone criminal trials, are moved to provincial jails alongside convicted criminals, simply for acting out.
In places like Vancouver BC however, as well as other smaller cities across the country – there are no permanent immigration detention centers. This means that all detainees generally get sent straight to jails. The provincial jail is the default, the norm.
And for those who are in fact held in separated designated immigration detention facilities – the grass isn’t necessarily greener. These migrants are often held in conditions worse than those in prisons. Unlike incarcerated individuals, immigration detainees do not have the right to habeas corpus (i.e. the right to challenge one’s detention before a judge)
In December of 2018, a new, permanent immigration center is set to open in Surrey B.C. The new complex will be on 76th Avenue, in a building that was previously an RCMP building. Just like the YVR facility, this new facility will also be governed by a private security firm – no civilian oversight.
While some see this as a positive development ensuring that no more migrants will be held in provincial jails – with the knowledge that migrant centers engage in practices deemed unconstitutional in provincial prisons – I wonder if this new development, in the absence of any reform in our immigration detention system, will only open the door to increased misconduct and mistreatment. Not to mention that by building more beds for migrant detainees, it is safe to assume that this government intends on and foresees more and more migrants being detained. Rather than engaging in reform of our system, this same taxpayer money is instead being put towards laying the foundations for a new prison infrastructure.
Here’s what Josh Patterson, the executive director of the BCCLA, B.C. Civil Liberties Association had to say when asked to comment:
“Often times, people are detained on flimsy pretenses. We don’t settle for this kind of looseness with any other law enforcement agency in the country, I’ve never understood why we put up with it, and why the government stands for it with the CBSA – who deal with a huge number of especially vulnerable people. And who have more powers than regular law enforcement does – particularly in situations at the border.
In my view there’s no reason why a court would find it’s unconstitutional for a convicted criminal to be held in indefinite solitary confinement for example, but it’s just fine to hold an immigration detainee indefinitely” – Josh Patterson, BCCLA
To recap:
It’s 2018, and the Canadian government is actively in the process of punishing and detaining migrants – people who are often guilty of factors beyond their control – for simply being born outside of our arbitrarily built, colonially enforced borders, often in skin color just a few shades too dark and/or not conforming to European belief systems. Punishing these people in ways worse than convicted criminals.
Despite the multi-faceted rainbow of skin-colors under the “Refugees Welcome” mirage the Canadian government and public relations sectors regularly and expensively promote across the globe, in reality Canada is more concerned with arbitrarily punishing people of color, than criminals or national security threats.
Not to mention, this White settler-colonial state is engaging in these policies and building these facilities on Indigenous lands without indigenous consent, only adding further insult to injury considering that Indigenous bodies are over policed and disproportionately incarcerated in this country.
If you are as shocked as I was upon discovering this shady underbelly of Settler-Colonial Canada’s immigration policies, you might also recognize the time to be shocked is long since over. Since 9/11 and the implementation of the CBSA and these racist immigration policies, the system has been imprisoning thousands of innocent people – who are denied habeas corpus and denied basic human rights guaranteed under our the Criminal Code – for reasons that are nowhere near sufficient or justifiable.
It’s time we to ask ourselves – why and how is it that a system like this is even in place?
For more information, check out:
Canadian Immigration Detention Framework: https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/canada
Canada’s longest case: http://projects.thestar.com/caged-by-canada-immigration-detention/part-1/
No One is Illegal – https://noii-van.resist.ca/issues/detention-and-deportation/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoOneIsIllegalNetwork/
How Vancouver Detains Non-Citizens – Podcast: https://www.citr.ca/radio/citr-documentaries/episode/20180628/
Special thanks to editors Margaret-Anne Murphy and Scott Martens.
