Emboldened by a recent Superior Court decision strongly condemning Canada’s practice of indefinite immigration detention, lawyers representing a West African man who has spent nearly four-and-a-half years in maximum-security jail waiting to be deported will demand his release Thursday at a hearing in Etobicoke.

“His ongoing detention is unconstitutional because it’s both arbitrary and indefinite,” said Jared Will, an immigration lawyer who recently took up the case of Ebrahim Toure, a 46-year-old failed refugee claimant who is not charged with a crime but has been in jail since February 2013.

“They say they’re detaining him for removal but they have no means of removing him. There’s no end point to his detention and it’s disconnected from its purpose.”

Toure, who was profiled earlier this year as part of a Star investigation into immigration detention, is the longest-serving immigration detainee in detention. He says he was born in The Gambia and raised partly in Guinea. But he can’t prove his citizenship to either country so neither will take him back. Canada’s border police accuse him of not co-operating with his deportation, but he insists he is willing to be deported and has given them all the information he has.

“Their position is that it’s his lack of co-operation that is the impediment to the removal,” said Will, who recently won the release of another immigration detainee who had been locked up for more than seven years. “But they have nothing concrete to demonstrate that there’s anything that he can actually do to facilitate the deportation.”

Toure’s case is just the latest to draw scrutiny upon Canada’s immigration detention system, which is facing a potential overhaul in light of recent court challenges. Will was the lead lawyer in those cases as well.

Last month he argued in Federal Court that the entire immigration detention regime violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and should be struck down or dramatically altered. A decision is expected sometime this summer.

In April he successfully persuaded Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer to order the immediate release of Kashif Ali, who had spent more than seven years in immigration detention. In a firm reprimand to Canada’s border police, Nordheimer called Ali’s situation “unacceptable” and said the government could not justify jailing someone indefinitely — even in cases where they were not co-operating with their removal.

Will is now threatening to take the government to court if they don’t release Toure.

About a month ago he sent a letter to Canadian border officials asking them to outline how Toure has been unco-operative and what specifically they want from him to assist in his removal.

“We’ve asked for a list of exactly the steps that they want him to take and they have failed to provide that list,” Will said. “If they can’t say what it is that they need from him it’s difficult, I think, to maintain the allegation that he’s the one who is not co-operating.”

Meanwhile, the Liberal government is in the midst of a review of immigration detention, having recently wrapped up a public consultation on potential policy changes. Last summer they announced a $138-million investment to upgrade immigration detention facilities and expand alternatives to detention. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has said his government is aiming to reduce the number of long-term detentions and the use of maximum-security jails.

But changes may soon be forced on the Liberals. Among those being considered by the Federal Court is a six-month limit on immigration detention — something that is already in place in some countries.

Currently, Canada’s border police can indefinitely detain non-citizens they consider a danger to the public, are unlikely to appear for their deportation, or if their identity is in doubt. The average length of detention is about three weeks, but some cases drag on for months or years. Although immigration detainees have not been criminally charged, many of them end up in maximum-security jails and are treated the same as sentenced criminals or those awaiting trial.

Toure’s case on Thursday will be heard by the quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board, an arm’s-length administrative tribunal that reviews detentions every 30 days. Lawyers often do not attend the detention reviews because they find them procedurally unfair and stacked in the government’s favour. Will, for instance, does not typically attend detention reviews because he has found them to be little more than a rubber stamp. But given the Superior Court’s decision in Ali’s case, he is hoping he can convince the board member that, just as it was with Ali, there is no reasonable prospect that Toure will be deported, so his continued detention is indefinite and disconnected from its purpose, which is a violation of the charter.

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Immigration officials have refused to discuss Toure’s case with the Star. In his detention reviews they have pointed to his past use of aliases to assail his credibility and suggested his current identity is also false.

Toure is not considered a danger to the public and he has never been charged with a crime in Canada. He did plead guilty in 2004 to selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs in Atlanta, Ga., where he was living under a false identity at the time. That conviction, for which he served no jail time, is the basis for the government’s decision to place Toure in a maximum-security jail rather than the less-restrictive Immigration Holding Centre.