Around 200 immigration detainees have recently been moved from prisons in the Greater Toronto Area and sent to a maximum-security prison in Lindsay, Ontario. These immigrant detainees now face lockdowns due to understaffing of the prison, and some are unable to leave their cells for 18 hours a day. The move from prisons in the Greater-Toronto Area has resulted in greater isolation for the detainees, many of whose families often live in Toronto.
Many of the new detainees in Lindsay have been on hunger strike since Wednesday, Sept. 18. Strikers are calling for better access to medical care, social workers, cheaper phone calls, international calling cards, better food, better legal aid and services, and an end to constant lockdowns.
According to the organization No One is Illegal, between 2004 and 2011, 82,000 people were locked up in immigration detention in Canada, with at least another 25,000 people being detained since 2011. In 2012, 289 of these detainees were children, some under the age of ten. About one-third of immigration detainees are held in maximum-security provincial prisons. Immigration detention centres are a $50 million business, run in partnership with private companies like G4S, Garda and Corbel Management. In Toronto alone, G4S and Corbel were paid $19 million between 2004 and 2008.
Almost $54 million of public money is spent on immigration detention annually, about $239 per day per detainee, while a unit of social housing can be provided at less than $31 a day per person.
Currently, less than 25 per cent of refugee claimants are accepted in Canada. It is becoming harder and harder to immigrate to Canada, especially since the implementation of recently passed Bill C-31. This bill has pushed those fleeing from persecution and violence, and those looking for opportunities for a better life, into the precarious conditions of “non-status people” who are targeted by violent raids and detentions. Any criminal charges result in them being treated more severely than the broader population, and incarcerated under severe conditions.
Mina Ramos, Lalo, and Joshua Gilbert are all involved in Fuerza/Puwersa, a migrant justice group currently organizing in solidarity with the hunger strikers. On Saturday, Sept. 29, Guelph community members met at a local coffee shop and wrote letters of support to immigration detainees in Lindsay.
“Prisoners are reiterating that in the US and England immigration detainees can only be held for 90 days,” Gilbert said. But in Canada, immigration detainees can be held indefinitely, with some having been held for up to 7 years.
Non-status people can be detained for different reasons such as prior convictions, or because they don’t have the right travel documents. Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), “if the country you are from is not willing to take you, and Canada does not want you, then you can be detained,” said Ramos.
“People have been put into segregation. The person who spurred the hunger strike is in segregation… For the UN, solitary confinement is a form of torture.”
“A lot of workers get PTSD just through the incarceration process,” Gilbert added. This is all on top of stressful experience refugees go through when fleeing their countries. With the Canadian Government looking to try to deport the refugee claimants, “some people are worried to be returning to violence,” said Lalo.
Ramos, Gilbert, and Lalo are against immigration detention, and believe that no one should be illegal. “These people are punished because they are not citizens. It’s a disgusting part of our society that we make people vulnerable based on their status,” Gilbert said.
Fuerza/Puwersa plans to keep up its solidarity work with the hunger strikers, by organizing a rally in coordination with other migrant rights groups across Canada. People are encouraged to sign a petition in support of the hunger strikers, and call key officials to tell them to meet the hunger strike demands.