Death in CBSA custody prompts human rights concerns
16 people have died while in the custody of the Canadian Border Services Agency since 2000.
(Credit: Mike Stevens, Unsplash)
Decarceration and immigration rights advocates are speaking out after the January death of a detained individual at the Laval Immigration Detention Centre in Québec.
The news came just one week after a family froze to death while attempting to cross into Manitoba.
In a Jan. 30 release, The Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) said the individual “was found in medical distress” but offered no details on what led to the distress.
“On-site personnel attended to the detainee immediately, conducting resuscitation maneuvers until paramedics arrived.”
According to advocacy organization Solidarity Across Borders, more than 15 people have died in the past 20 years while in CBSA custody, whether it be in detention centres managed by CBSA or one of their affiliate companies—the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, and GardaWorld—who were hired to “provide private ‘security.’”
While the group was not able to provide any additional information about the person who died while in the custody of the CBSA, they described the individual as “a migrant detained for administrative purposes, i.e., for not having papers.”
“This person should never have been detained in the first place, and now they are gone,” a Feb. 5 press release from Solidarity Across Borders read.
“CBSA lets those in its custody die by refusing to provide attention, medical or otherwise,” the release continued. “These deaths are entirely preventable.”
‘An urgent wake-up call for Canada’
For advocacy organization Human Rights Watch, last month’s death at Laval represents “an urgent wake-up call for Canada.”
“We still don’t know this person’s name, age, whether they had a child, where they were from, how long they had been detained, or whether they had a mental health condition,” Hanna Gros and Samer Muscati wrote on Feb. 4.
Gros and Muscati noted that the CBSA “has a history of cloaking fatalities of immigration detainees in secrecy and refusing to release basic information about those who die in custody and the cause of death, often citing privacy concerns.”
How could that be? They go on to explain that “immigration holding centers resemble and operate like medium security prisons, with significant restrictions on privacy and liberty, rigid rules and daily routines, and punitive measures, including placement in conditions akin to solitary confinement.”
Gros and Muscati continue, "Immigration detainees are under constant surveillance by uniformed guards and cameras, and are repeatedly searched. Communication with loved ones, legal representatives, and community supports is restricted, as basic personal effects like mobile phones are banned."
Because Canada has no legal limit on the length of immigration detention, individuals in the custody of the CBSA “are at risk of being detained indefinitely,” according to a 2021 report from Human Rights Watch.
(Credit: Human Rights Watch)
The advocacy organization credited three separate hunger strikes in 2021 at the Laval facility that highlighted “life-threatening conditions” for a marginalized community that is often left to suffer in silence.
The names of those who have died in custody in Canada since 2000 include Bolante Idowu Alo, Abdurahman Ibrahim Hassan, Fransisco Javier Roméro Astorga, Melkioro Gahung, Jan Szamko, Lucia Vega Jimenez, Joseph Fernandes, Kevon O’Brien Phillip, Shawn Dwight Cole, Joseph Dunn, Sheik Kudrath, Prince Maxamillion Akamai, and two unidentified men and another unidentified person.
As Solidarity Across Borders explains better than this writer ever could:
The construction of a new prison in Laval in 2018 and the rise in funding to allegedly “humanize” the immigration detention system changes nothing. The fact that there are trees in the visitor parking lot, a basketball court and a playground in the fenced yard (concealed from view) change absolutely nothing: these places are prisons for migrants, for families and children. Detention is not an exceptional measure, but rather a fundamental part of the repressive matrix that is the Canadian immigration system. It serves to facilitate deportation, and to punish migrants for leaving situations of poverty, violence and exploitation, which Canada is often involved in creating.
CBSA remains tight-lipped on detainee death
Solidarity Across Borders pointed out that the CBSA has only been required to publicly announce each death in their custody in the past few years, with details of the circumstances around the deaths often remaining hidden from public view in the name of a “right to privacy.”
The organization is also concerned about the investigation into the death, which is being carried out no differently than any other: by a police force. The lack of independent oversight over the CBSA—the only major Canadian law enforcement agency without one—is something they believe needs to change.
“As usual, police will investigate the work of other police and meanwhile, the detention center remains impenetrable, hidden from the public who already know so little about the neglect, abuse and lack of care taking place inside,” the release read.
In a Tuesday statement to The Blueprint, the CBSA declined to answer questions about the individual who passed away in their custody, or provide additional insight into the “medical distress” the victim was found in. The CBSA also failed to state the estimated time between distress and discovery, or the time it took for first responders to arrive on-scene.
“What I can tell you is that the CBSA is conducting a review of the circumstances of the incident. In addition, as in all cases of death of a person in CBSA custody, provincial authorities are engaged, in this case the Sûreté du Québec and the Quebec Coroner’s office,” communications advisor Jacqueline Roby wrote. “The CBSA cannot release additional information while the investigation is ongoing.”