Immigration and Customs Detention

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a rapid international expansion in the use of immigration and customs detention. The decision to hold a person in immigration detention is generally implemented under administrative law provisions and is typically applied to irregular migrants arriving at the border of a country without valid entry documents or as a result of visa breaches or cancellations while resident within a country. Immigration detention has grown as a major strategy in managing irregular migrants including asylum seekers who seek refugee protection on arrival or to facilitate removal following an adverse refugee status decision. In 2016, the Global Detention Project identified over 2,000 places of immigration detention across 100 countries. It has also estimated that in any single year, in excess of ...