source: Human Rights Watch

published: 19 September 2025

Image Credit: Nualpradid at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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.

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