Support at Detention Hearing. Thursday, December 15th at 11:00 am. Immigration and Refugee Board Offices, 300 West Georgia Street

Nader is a 46 year old Iranian refugee who has been detained and imprisoned by Canadian Border Services Agency since 2005. Nader has spent over six years behind bars, without any substantive charges, under the jurisdiction of the Immigration Act.

His length of detention is unprecedented in Canada.

Nader has now been on a six-week hunger strike and will be appearing yet again for a detention review on Thursday December 15th at 11 am at Immigration and Refugee Board offices (300 West Georgia). He is calling on the public and allies in the anti-detention movement to bear witness to this arbitrary, inhumane, and indefinite detention hearing. No One Is Illegal attended his last hearing and he said that it was a huge boost in morale for him. (We ask supporters to please keep in mind about bearing witness and to be cautious of how our conduct will reflect/impact on him.)

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Silky Shah, Samar, 11 Sep. 2011

In June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), released enforcement statistics showing that over 363,000 people were detained during FY 2010 (Oct. 09 – Sept. 10). This is twice the number of people detained in 2006 and about seven times the number of people detained in 1994. The U.S. has the largest immigration detention infrastructure in the world and with ICE’s current plan to expand the number of facilities and their nationwide implementation of the deportation program, Secure Communities, it will continue to grow. While many in the immigrant rights movement are targeting the draconian policies of President Obama, and rightly so, blame for the explosion in immigrant detention and deportations runs deeper, and traces back to both the post-9/11 policies of the Bush administration and the wholesale reform of policy under Clinton, which categorically changed the way immigrants are viewed by the U.S. government. Today, more immigrants are being detained and deported than ever before, and it’s just getting worse.

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By Adam Serwer, Mother Jones, 9 Sep. 2011

The Obama administration has deported close to one million undocumented immigrants since January 2009, according to recently updated statistics from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

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Nicholas Keung, The Star, 1 Sep, 2011

Ottawa has defied a United Nations committee’s request and deported a mentally ill immigrant to Jamaica, where he has no family and limited access to treatment. In a rare move, the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva this week asked Canada to hold off deporting Audley Horace Gardner — the same day the 48-year-old was escorted back to Kingston.

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The Star, 14 Apr. 2011

The Canada Border Services Agency removed 15,073 individuals from Canada last year, compared to 13,249 in 2009. Of those, 12 per cent were deported for criminality; 73 per cent were failed refugee claimants.

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