Confining kids shouldn’t be part of the job for immigration agents
When asked about the controversy surrounding the separation of migrant children from their parents, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remarked that “this is not the way we do things in Canada.”
He’s right, to a certain extent. The situation in Canada is not as stark as what we’re seeing in the United States where more than 2,900 children have been detained between May and June alone. Yet a total of 595 minors have been detained at Canadian immigration holding centres in the past three years. Forty-three were unaccompanied by an adult.
We need to be asking why children — including Canadian citizens — are being held in jail-like detention facilities at all in this country, even if it’s with a parent.
We should also be wondering how confining people who have committed no crime is impacting the workers tasked with placing them in conditions no one would want for their own families. I can’t help but imagine how I would feel if my nine-year-old daughter was held in a facility where she had little access to fresh air or education, and was constantly monitored by security personnel.
The confinement of even one child should be unacceptable to every single one of us, particularly as we recall with shame this country’s legacy of residential schools.
Any policy of detention — even as a “last resort,” as outlined in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — must be treated as a violation of the human rights of children.
Furthermore, there has been no discussion about the impact of harmful policies, even when unintended, on the workers who have to implement a system of rules that potentially hurt much more than they help.
It needn’t be this way at all.
In a 2017 proposal titled, “Ending immigration detention of children,” the Canadian Council of Refugees called for a series of amendments that include providing “community-based alternatives to detention for families” and providing “designated representatives to separated children” so that someone is always looking out for them. The government has made some progress on these issues but must continue to bring a human rights lens to all of its immigration policies.
Any adjustments should include reexamining the Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires migrants entering Canada through the United States to be turned back to have their refugee claims heard south of the border. It is clear that America’s new immigration policies fail the safety test.
“We should make crystal clear that we will not be complicit in (Trump’s) mistreatment of refugees,” wrote Lloyd Axworthy, former foreign affairs minister and current chair of the World Refugee Council, in a recent commentary piece.
The “we” in his statement includes our border and immigration agents who are dedicated to protecting our country and to serving its people. We shouldn’t require them to do anything we wouldn’t want to have done to our children.
Hassan Yussuff is the president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).