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Canada A Rogue Nation Printer friendly page Print This
By Staff Writers, teleSUR
teleSUR
Monday, Feb 27, 2017

Hundreds of Children Detained by Canadian Immigration: Report

A mother and her child are taken into custody by RCMP officers after crossing U.S.-Canada border into Hemmingford, Quebec, Feb. 20, 2017. | Photo:

When Naimah was arrested in February 2015, her 8-year-old daughter was plucked from school during recess and led straight to immigration detention, where the two remain locked up for a year and three weeks.

A psychological assessment of the young girl later revealed that she had severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which caused her to have a number of physical and mental problems, including bedwetting, feelings of sadness and anxiety, thoughts of death, frequent nightmares and loss of appetite.

Aaliyah is just one of hundreds of children detained by Canadian immigration authorities in the last few years, according to a new study by the University of Toronto. Researchers from the school’s International Human Rights Program found that more than 200 children that are Canadian citizens have been placed in immigration detention alongside their undocumented parents since 2011, while hundreds more non-Canadian children have also been formally detained.

Many mothers interviewed for the study reported suffering a feeling of "sheer helplessness" in the face of the situation.

Based on data from the Canada Border Services Agency, the study found that at least 241 Canadian-born children were held in the immigration holding center in Toronto between 2011 and 2015. This number does not account for detention facilities in other parts of Canada, which the study did not explore

Researchers found that, on average, the children were detained for 36 days, with one boy spending 803 days — over two years — in the detention facility. Two-thirds of the children were incarcerated for more than a week, while 31 percent were held for more than a month. Eighty five percent of the children were under 6 years old.

“Children who experience even brief periods of detention have extremely negative psychological reactions that often persist long after they are released,” warned the 63-page study, titled "Invisible Citizens: Canadian Children in Immigration Detention" and released Thursday, as reported by the Toronto Star.

“Children who are spared detention but are separated from their detained parents experience similarly grave consequences for their mental health.”

The researchers interviewed detained and formerly detained mothers of Canadian children from the Middle East, West Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Almost all of them had with issues such as difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, loss of interest in playing, and symptoms of depression and separation anxiety.

“Canadian children are invisible in Canada’s immigration detention system,” Samer Muscati, the director of the University of Toronto's human rights program told the Toronto Star. “While all detention of children is horrible, these children are particularly vulnerable because they lack important legal safeguards, including their own detention review hearings.”

Muscati explained that because these Canadian-born children are citizens, they cannot be formally detained — making them unable to access legal proceedings that would review their continued “de facto” detention.

One of the report’s authors, Hanna Gros, said the mothers she interviewed for the study were dealing with “sheer helplessness.”

“The interviews were emotionally intense. It was heartbreaking to see how helpless they felt when it comes to protecting their children,” Gros told the Star.

“Separating from your child is traumatic. It is not a real choice. Some of the women I met were still breastfeeding,” she added.

Canada is a rogue nation when it comes to immigration detention. Unlike the United States and European Union — which have laws limiting detention period, as recommended by the United Nations — Canada has a policy of indefinite immigration detention.


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