Facing a constitutional challenge and widespread criticism from humanitarian organizations, government lawyers defended Canada’s immigration detention system in Federal Court on Tuesday, saying indefinite detention is necessary to ensure public safety.

“The notion of indefinite detention is a construct,” said C. Julian Jubenville, one of the government’s lawyers, who added that even when a detention has been long and its end is unclear, continuing to hold the detainee could still be justified in order to protect the public. “There is a purpose to detention that involves public safety,” he said.

Lawyers representing former immigration detainee Alvin Brown, who spent five years in a maximum-security jail before he was deported to Jamaica last year, are in court this week arguing that Canada’s immigration detention system is unconstitutional because it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by allowing arbitrary and indefinite detention as well as cruel and unusual treatment. They are calling on the court to impose a six-month limit on immigration detention and demanding other changes to the system.

Canada’s border police currently have the right to imprison non-citizens without charge and for an indefinite length of time if they have been found to be inadmissible to the country and declared a danger to the public or unlikely to show up for their deportation. Although immigration detention is, by the government’s own description, not supposed to be punitive, detainees are often held in maximum-security jails — in some cases for several years — while the government tries to deport them.

Government lawyer Jubenville, riffing on a metaphor used Monday by Brown’s lawyers, argued that setting a maximum length for immigration detention would not be like taking a hammer or scalpel to the current system.

“It’s a hand grenade,” he said. “We have no idea where this is going to spray and who will be left standing at the end.”

He argued the government needed to take an “individual approach” to each immigration detention case.

Unlike some other countries, Canada has no maximum length of immigration detention, an aspect of the system that has been widely condemned. Two years ago the United Nations Human Rights Committee called on Canada to set a “reasonable” time limit for immigration detention.

Government lawyers argued Tuesday that while long-term detentions do occur, they are not systemic and are usually caused by the detainee themselves. They also said that setting a maximum length of detention would create an incentive for detainees to not co-operate with their deportation.

Last month, an Ontario Superior Court judge ordered the immediate release of Kashif Ali, a 51-year-old West African man who spent more than seven years in maximum-security jail because the government could not deport him. Ali, who was the longest-serving immigration detainee, lacked the documentation to prove his citizenship and his home country refused to take him back.

In his decision, Justice Ian Nordheimer called Ali’s situation “unacceptable” and said the government could not purport to hold someone in detention forever. Nordheimer rejected the government’s allegation that Ali was intentionally thwarting his removal, but he said that even if Ali wasn’t co-operating, the government still could not justify detaining him as long as it did, let alone indefinitely.

Government lawyers argued Tuesday that “robust” protections already exist for immigration detainees, whose detentions are reviewed every 30 days by the quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent administrative tribunal. Brown’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that the detention reviews are procedurally unfair and not only fail to protect detainees’ rights but actually contribute to prolonging their detention.

As part of a recent investigation into immigration detention, the Star found that the monthly detention reviews amounted to little more than a rubber stamp. Detainees are often unrepresented, the government’s evidence is untested and accepted as fact, and there is no meaningful disclosure. Two immigration lawyers described the hearings to the Star as “Kafkaesque.”

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Government lawyers argued on Tuesday, however, that the current system is reasonable and fair, even if detainees don’t always take advantage of its protections.

The case is being heard by Federal Court Justice Simon Fothergill, who could strike down the current immigration detention system and order the government to write new laws, impose specific changes to existing laws, or keep the status quo in place. He said he will make his decision some time this summer.