In a major victory for migrant and refugee rights, on September 14, Ontario became the last province in Canada to block the Canada Border Services Agency from using provincial jails to incarcerate migrants and asylum seekers on administrative grounds. The border agency said that “as of September 15, there are no people detained in a provincial correctional facility.”
Ontario historically had the largest number of immigration detainees in provincial jails, and scrutiny intensified after a 2023 coroner’s inquest into the 2015 death of Abdurahman Hassan revealed shocking conditions in those facilities.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Canada launched the #WelcomeToCanada campaign in October 2021 to pressure provinces to end the practice. Since then, hundreds of advocates, lawyers, healthcare providers, and faith leaders, alongside people who had been in immigration detention as well as former cabinet ministers and dozens of leading social justice organizations, have called for an end to immigration detention in provincial jails. More than 30,000 people across Canada have written directly to authorities in support.
The use of provincial jails for immigration detention is punitive, inconsistent with international human rights standards, and devastating to people’s mental health. A 2021 report documented that racialized people, and in particular Black men, are confined in more restrictive conditions and for longer periods than other detainees. People with disabilities also experience discrimination throughout the immigration detention process.
In March, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities urged Canada to protect the legal capacity rights of people with disabilities in detention and called for an end to immigration detention altogether. In August, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released its report on its visit to Canada, expressing alarm at plans to use federal correctional facilities for immigration detention.
Yet the federal government is moving in the opposite direction: in July 2025, the border agency began incarcerating detainees at a “temporary designated immigrant station” at a federal prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec.
Ottawa should urgently follow the provinces’ lead. It should work toward abolishing immigration detention, halt the expansion into federal prisons, and scale up humane, community-based alternatives that respect rights and honour Canada’s international obligations.
