Between April 2019 and March 2020, 138 infants and children were held in immigration detention. A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International Canada found that Canada’s refugee system has been tarnished over the last decade by the incarceration of tens of thousands of individuals in immigration detention, many of them in provincial jails. Immigration detention transgresses human rights, criminalizes, grossly mistreats, and stigmatizes these families.
In response, more than 160 religious organizations and leaders signed a statement coordinated by Citizens for Public Justice calling for the federal government to abolish immigration detention.