Canada’s incarceration of hundreds of migrant children is a violation of Canadian and international law, and a stain on the country’s reputation, according to 46 medical and legal advocacy groups who are pressing the government to stop it.
Data obtained by the group show an average of 242 children were detained in each of the past four years, often after failed refugee claims.
Canada’s government says public safety is a main concern, along with flight risk and uncertain identity, but the group’s research shows virtually all detentions, almost 90 per cent, are to prevent people fleeing in advance of deportation or not showing up to a tribunal. In some cases, these people’s children have been born in Canada and are therefore citizens, but must be detained as well to avoid leaving children alone. That means the 242 number is lower than the true number, as it only includes formal foreign child detainees.
Newborns to teenagers, they come from all over the world, and have often fled conflict. They are held in literal jails — the main ones are in Toronto one in Laval, Que. — where nutrition is poor for babies especially, conditions are grim, and their mental health is damaged so much that the younger ones start playing games like “security check pat down,” according to the advocacy groups.
They’re not nurseries. They’re not designed as daycare centres. These are, in effect, prisons
“They are the equivalent of medium security prisons. There’s barbed wire, there are routines that people have to follow in terms of mealtimes. They’re not nurseries. They’re not designed as daycare centres. These are, in effect, prisons,” said Samer Muscati, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto. “It’s the worst sort of place you can put a child in ”
He described meeting parents of children whose first words were “search” or “shift change.”
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency, “wants to avoid housing children in detention facilities as much as humanly possible,” said his spokesman, Scott Bardsley.
He said the government welcomes this joint statement and is committed to creating a better, fairer detention system. To this end, Canada has invested $138-million, and is pursuing greater “community-based alternatives,” such as cash bonds and guarantors. He also said CBSA will start releasing statistics on immigration detention “in the near future.”
The advocacy groups had to fight for access to their numbers through freedom of information law.
“I think the government is on board with this. Our concern is we want them to move quickly and urgently,” Muscati said.
Canada has been a moral leader on refugees, he said, by welcoming thousands willingly even when they are not showing up on the borders, as they are in Europe.
“It undermines that whole effort it, on the back end, you have children languishing away in facilities, including Syrians,” Muscati said.
In a phone interview from Ukraine Monday night, one of these children, Vladyslav Zadorozhnyi, 15, described his experiences in Toronto’s immigration detention facility last month.
He and his mother and 7-year-old brother were held for five days as flight risks in advance of their deportation last week, after their refugee claim failed.
Vladyslav described being chained in handcuffs during transportation outside his family’s room. He was forced to follow a rigid schedule that started with breakfast at 6 a.m., and only a brief half hour outside, but only if his mother could accompany him. They were not allowed contact with her husband, his stepfather, who was held separately for much longer.
“It was like a jail,” Vladyslav said.
Friends brought them candies only to have them confiscated. Once a week, they said, guards sold candies for the children.
“Children who are detained or separated from their families experience extreme psychological distress,” said Rachel Kronick, assistant professor of psychiatry at McGill University. “Even short periods of detention or family separation can generate significant suffering and mental health problems for children, and these reactions can endure long after release.”
National Post
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