Tuesday March 7, 2023
By Nicholas Keung
In a letter endorsed by two former Liberal cabinet ministers on Monday, 40 advocacy groups demanded Ottawa to heed the recommendation by the Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan inquest jury.
In a letter endorsed by two former federal Liberal cabinet ministers, 40 advocacy groups have demanded the federal government stop incarcerating immigration detainees in provincial jails, in the wake of a recent inquest making the same recommendation.
Advocates renewed their call on Monday to end practice, following the non-binding recommendation from the inquiry into the death of Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan.
“The purpose of the inquest was to prevent similar deaths from taking place in the future, and the jury’s recommendations provide a clear road map for the work ahead,” said the three-page letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
Hassan, a Somali refugee with a lengthy history of mental illness, was held in various Ontario jails for three years, often in extended periods of segregation. In June 2015, he was taken to a Peterborough hospital for seizures and died days later during a struggle under the watch of two police officers while in Canada Border Services Agency custody.
During the 17-day inquest, the jury heard how the federal detainee ended up in a provincial jail; his conditions in detention over periods of segregation; his physical and mental health challenges and treatment; his behavioural change in his final days; the restraints and care he received in the hospital; and the immediate events leading up to his death while awaiting deportation on June 11, 2015.
The five jurors reviewing Hassan’s death made 53 recommendations directed at federal and provincial authorities, police and correctional services and the Peterborough Regional Health Centre. Their first recommendation was for the federal government to “seek and allocate resources to develop and implement a plan to end the practice of housing immigration detainees in provincial correctional facilities in Ontario.”
Advocates said there are currently no laws or regulations governing when and under what circumstances people in immigration detention can be transferred to, and incarcerated in, a provincial jail.
The Canada Border Services Agency’s “decisions regarding where people in immigration detention are incarcerated appear to be implemented in an ad hoc, inconsistent, and even discriminatory manner,” states the letter, endorsed by Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, who served as foreign affairs minister and Justice minister respectively in Jean Chrétien’s government.
The advocacy groups, led by Human Rights Watch, said they are particularly concerned about the jail detention of those with a pre-existing mental health condition or disability.
“They are placed in provincial jails, regularly handcuffed and shackled, and they endure lockdowns, constant surveillance, and even solitary confinement,” said their joint letter, citing 17 immigration detainees’ deaths since 2000, including two last year in British Columbia and Quebec.
“The conditions that people in immigration detention face are profoundly disturbing.”
During the inquest, federal government lawyers maintained that there are already mechanisms in place to hold the border services agency accountable for immigration detention while protecting the safety and interests of the public.