Canada violates international law as migratory children gets jailed: Advocacy groups

An average of 242 children were detained in each of the past four years, due to failed refugee claims, a group report says.

Although the government says public safety is the main concern, along with flight risk and uncertain identity, but then the group’s research shows virtually all detentions, almost 90 percent, are to prevent people escaping in before a deportation or not showing up to a tribunal.

However, in some cases, these people’s children have been born in Canada and are therefore citizens of the country, but they have to be detained as well to avoid leaving children alone. Therefore, it means the 242 number is lower than the actual number, as it only includes formal foreign child detainees.

According to the advocacy groups, from newborns to teenagers, all across the world are held in Canadian jails. Some of them are in Toronto, while one of the jails which cater to these children is in Laval, in Quebec. The group says the nutrition levels for babies and children is very poor, conditions are grim and their mental health is so damaged that the younger ones get involved in games like “security check pat down”.

Samer Muscati, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto says, “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. It’s the worst sort of place you can put a child in.”

Scott Bardlsley, spokesman of the Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency, in a statement mentioned “wants to avoid housing children in detention facilities as much as humanly possible.”

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.”

(Reporting by Debarati Mukherjee)