Border officials offer rare look inside Canada’s largest immigration holding centre

TORONTO — When Osama Al-Hadad arrived from Yemen and applied for asylum at Toronto’s Pearson airport, he was taken into custody because he lacked documentation to prove his identity.

He spent over a month in Canada Border Services Agency’s immigration holding centre near the airport and was released on Feb. 19 after his identity was verified.

But his experience wasn’t anything like a detention, he said.

Al-Hadad was among 70 detainees kept there at the time for reasons that included immigration violations, criminal convictions and lack of proper documents – one of thousands who go through three such detention centres in Canada in the course of a year.

In a rare move, The Canadian Press and several other media outlets were recently invited to visit the sprawling, three-storey compound in Toronto’s west end.

It’s a place where detainees can move freely within their dormitory-style units, watch television and interact with their roommates.

The building has a gym, a multi-faith prayer room, a library and even a menu that offers detainees a choice of meals, taking into account their dietary restrictions. Weekly yoga classes and addiction counselling are also offered.

Al-Hadad said he was treated with dignity and respect after fleeing Yemen, where a decade-long civil war has led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

“They cared about our health, our food and drinks, our daily routine, providing all our needs. They make you feel human,” he said about officers at the holding centre.

“I’m surprised by the good treatment, how they treated us,” he said through a translator after his release.

“I would be treated this way only in my home.”

The tour of the detention centre provided a starkly different picture of how Canada’s immigration authorities are treating those in their custody, compared to the aggressive approach taken in the United States amid an immigration enforcement crackdown.

Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, there have been numerous reports of foreign nationals being held in American detention facilities for days or weeks without proper access to lawyers or contact with the outside world.

They include a Canadian woman who was held in “inhumane” conditions for about 12 days in a privately run Arizona detention centre after her visa was denied at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to her family.

Trump has embarked on a mass deportation campaign that has emboldened U.S. officials to even send some migrants to the notorious detention facility in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, where terrorism suspects were held and tortured after the 9/11 attacks.

At the CBSA facility in Toronto, detention of foreign nationals “is not meant to be rehabilitation or punitive,” said Sajjad Bhatti, the director of immigration enforcement operations.

He said most people there are being held due to identity or flight risk issues, but there are also people who have criminal convictions and pose “significant” risks to public safety, and are in the process of being removed from Canada.

The Toronto immigration holding centre is the largest of the three in Canada and can accommodate 195 people, followed by one in Laval, Que., with about 150 beds, and one in Surrey, B.C., with 70 beds.

More than 4,000 detentions were recorded across those three centres between 2023 and 2024, CBSA data shows.

Nearly 13,000 individuals across the country were also enrolled last year in the “alternative to detention” program that allows their release under certain conditions, according to data from the federal government. Fifty-four people were detained in prisons.

Robert Israel Blanshay, an immigration lawyer who has worked with CBSA detainees for decade, said immigration holding centres have come a long way over the years, but there is still lots of room for improvement.

He said he is currently representing a Sri Lankan national who is being held at the Toronto centre because he couldn’t prove his identity and is considered to be a flight risk.

While his client is treated well in a “clean, safe” facility and is able to call his wife in India, Blanshay argued he shouldn’t be there in the first place.

“Nobody likes being in detention, so what clients tell me is ‘get me out,’” he said, arguing that it isn’t justifiable to keep anyone in those facilities due to a lack of proper documentation or being a flight risk.

People in such circumstances shouldn’t be in the same holding facility as those who have serious criminal charges or convictions, Blanshay said.

He said timely access to lawyers and legal help is still a “massive” issue for immigration detainees across Canada.

Canada has deported 16,860 foreigners in 2024, a nearly 11 per cent increase over the year before, and more than double compared to 2022, according to the CBSA’s latest data.

The agency said it aims to remove 20,000 inadmissible foreigners each year from 2025 until 2027, as part of Ottawa’s $1.3-billion plan to boost border security and immigration enforcement in response to Trump’s tariffs threats.

The federal government is committed to increasing the removals by 25 per cent in the next three years, Carl Desmarais, the director general of inland enforcement directorate at the CBSA, said in a phone interview.

Desmarais said the agency has received $55 million from the government to increase its enforcement capacity, “and that is largely going to be for us to be able to conduct additional removals.”

As of December, 485,395 foreigners were on the agency’s removal inventory, meaning they can be processed for deportation. The CBSA said the removal of more than 30,000 foreign nationals – with Mexican, Indian and American citizens topping the list – is in progress.

The agency said it cannot locate nearly 30,000 individuals who are labelled as “wanted.”

“Those are individuals that would be under an enforceable removal order…they don’t necessarily show up for their removal and then we issue a warrant,” said Desmarais.

In one unit at the Toronto detention facility, a small group of women chatted in the living room as reporters were allowed to enter one of their bedrooms. Inside, there were two beds and one of them had a Bible and a folded brown blanket on it. There was a shelf in one corner of the room where the occupant kept her belongings.

Those arriving at the Toronto detention centre are first medically assessed and offered a meal or anything else they need, such as clothing, Bhatti said.

After 48 hours, they have their first admissibility hearing before a member of the Immigration Refugee Board of Canada who decides whether to keep or release the detainee.

Bhatti said the focus is on making sure those who pose serious safety risks don’t walk free. If a detainee is kept for longer than a week, then the board schedules a monthly hearing until the case is settled.

The average time each detainee spends at the centre is 15 days, officials said.

If the immigration board decides to deport someone, there is an appeal process that can take months. But if a detainee accepts deportation, the removal takes between one or two weeks and is often done on commercial flights, Bhatti said.

Throughout the process, access to interpreters, legal counsel and refugee services is granted, CBSA officials said.

The number of children held at detention centres has been steadily declining, dropping to single digits in the past eight years, the CBSA said.

Three minors, along with their guardians, were held at the Toronto centre so far this year, officials said when The Canadian Press visited.

“It’s important to note that although we have the capability of detaining minors, we’ve had a lot of ministerial direction over the years that detention of a minor is a measure of absolute last resort,” Bhatti said.

But Blanshay said no minor should ever be detained.

“It’s unfathomable…I’m not here to say that these are easy, simple solutions for the government. But no child in my view should be in a detention centre.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2025.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press