What Habeas Corpus Can (and Cannot) Do for Immigration Detainees: Scotland v Canada and the Injustices of Imprisoning Migrants

Abstract

This paper closely studies Scotland v Canada to reveal the normative and substantive justice challenges facing immigration detainees across Canada. The Scotland decision at the Ontario Superior Court certified a habeas corpus writ as an individual remedy to release Mr. Ricardo Scotland from a pointless, seventeen-month incarceration. The decision frames Mr. Scotland’s detention as anomalous or divergent from an otherwise-functioning system. Against this view, this paper argues that access to habeas corpus cannot remedy the detention system’s scale of injustices. The paper contextualizes Mr. Scotland’s incarceration and the Superior Court decision against two primary claims: first, that the Canadian immigration and refugee determination system is arbitrarily biased against certain minoritized individuals, therefore transforming some people into detainable bodies; and second, that the global criminalization of migration trend has nested an arc of penal practices into Canadian policymaking and law, and this arc has seemingly normalized indefinite detention for some migrants. The paper concludes that restoration of access to habeas corpus cannot be understood as a substantive remedy to address the miscarriages of justice in the Canadian detention system.

Springing Amir

“…An intersectional lens on the sliding doors scenarios reveals how migrants and refugees experience racial violence, particularly anti-Black racism, on top of immigrant injustice and the violence of detention. Raced, classed, gendered, ableist, neoliberal, and post/neo-colonial biases construct legal and policy categories of "illegal, " "inadmissible, " and "criminal" people, creating barriers to equality for migrants and for citizens (see, e.g., Chan 2005;Clutterbuck 2015;Fernando and Rinaldi 2017;Goldring et al 2009;Sharma 2001;Silverman 2019;Silverman and Kaytaz 2020;Tam 2017). Tryon Woods (2013 reminds us that anti-Black paradigms ("prostitution, human traffi cking, international drug trade, or even feminist analyses of the larger historical context of globalization") continue to delimit South-to-North migrants into either victims or perpetrators, thereby injuring them in countless ways before they arrive at a prison or detention center.…”

Immigration et criminalisation au Canada : état des lieux

“…Sans être une panacée (Silverman, 2019), il s'agit d'une bonne nouvelle pour les personnes qui veulent limiter le recours à la détention car l'arrêt permet de recourir à une protection contre la détention abusive plus généralement associée au système de justice pénale.…”