Canada regularly breaches international human rights obligations by routinely detaining migrants with mental health issues in maximum-security jails — sometimes for years, says a hard-hitting new study.

Calling the country’s immigration detention system “a legal black hole,” University of Toronto law school researchers said there are no established criteria in law to determine when a detainee can or should be transferred from an immigration holding centre to a provincial jail.

“Canada’s detention review regime creates an effective presumption against release, while judicial review of detention decisions is largely ineffectual,” said the study by the law school’s International Human Rights Program, to be released Thursday.

“In some cases, the end result is long-term detention that is, in practice, preventative and indefinite.”

The 129-page report was the result of 10 months of field work and research that included dozens of interviews with lawyers, correctional staff, a former border agency director, doctors, mental health experts, former and current detainees as well as data obtained under government access to information requests.

Its release comes just a week after an “agitated” 39-year-old immigration detainee was restrained and died in a Peterborough hospital after he was transferred from the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay.

It also followed the high-profile death of Mexican detainee Lucia Vega Jimenez, who committed suicide while in detention in Vancouver.

According to the U of T study, more than 7,300 migrants — 60 per cent of them in Ontario — were detained by Canada Border Service Agency in 2013, the latest statistics available; nearly one-third of them were held in provincial prisons intended for the criminal population.

The rest were detained at dedicated immigration holding centres in Toronto (195 beds), Montreal (150 beds) and Vancouver (24 beds for short stays of less than 72 hours).

“Some detainees have no past criminal record, but are detained on the basis that they are a flight risk, or because their identity cannot be confirmed . . . Some spend more time in jail on account of their immigration status than the underlying criminal conviction,” said the study authored by researchers, Hanna Gros and Paloma van Groll.

“Counsel and jail staff we spoke to noted that migrants are often held in provincial jails on the basis of pre-existing mental health issues (including suicidal ideation), medical issues or because they are deemed ‘problematic’ or unco-operative by CBSA.”

A man known as Victor Vinnetou, who is believed to be anti-apartheid icon Mbuyisa Makhubu, but can’t be positively identified, is among the immigration detainees being held in the Lindsay jail. Another is Michael Mvogo, who has been detained for eight years, but can’t be deported because officials can't confirm his identity.

The researchers interviewed seven immigration detainees who had been detained in a provincial jail between two months and eight years. Each had a diagnosed mental health issue and/or expressed serious anxiety or suicidal thoughts.

Gros and van Groll cited a 2013 study by McGill University psychologist Janet Cleveland, who found a third of immigration detainees had clinical post-traumatic-stress disorder after an average 31 days in detention; two-thirds were clinically anxious and more than 75 per cent were depressed.

“Once a detainee finds him or herself in provincial jail, they fall into a legal black hole where neither CBSA nor the provincial jail has clear authority over their conditions of confinement. This is especially problematic since in Ontario at least, there is no regular, independent monitoring of provincial jails,” said the U of T study.

“Detention in a provincial jail, even for a short period, exacerbated their mental health issues, or created new ones.”

The study also argued the arbitrariness of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s decision to release or detain an individual, citing the wide range of the rate of release across Canada. In Ontario, for example, the release rate was only 10 per cent in 2013, compared to 38 per cent in the western region that covers British Columbia.

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It recommends Ottawa create an independent oversight body responsible for investigating CBSA and to whom immigration detainees can complain. It also urges the government to adopt a presumption against detention beyond 90 days and effectively employ alternatives to detention.

The study will be presented in person to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva in July.