Federal government plans on incarcerating migrants in its penitentiaries

The Trudeau government wants to use federal prisons to detain migrants deemed «high-risk,» according to a line buried in the federal budget tabled on Tuesday.

The statement, at the bottom of the financial document, has angered human rights organizations.

«The government proposes to introduce amendments to the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to enable the use of federal correctional facilities for the purpose of high-risk immigration detention,» reads Annex 3 on page 409 of the federal budget.

«I felt a big sense of betrayal,» said Lloyd Axworthy, chair of the World Refugee & Migration Council.

«We think it is inconsistent with basic Canadian values and the betrayal of the notion of our country as a nation of refuge,» said Allan Rock, also a member of that organization.

Both say incarcerating people for immigration purposes violates their fundamental human rights and international law.

World Refugee & Migration Council is one of the groups that campaigned alongside Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to convince provinces to end their immigration detention agreements with the federal government.

The federal government's plan to now use its penitentiaries — that house people who have committed the worst crimes — is «completely unacceptable,» says Rock.

«They've gone to the kind of nuclear alternative,» added Axworthy.

The two former federal Liberal ministers believe the Trudeau government's proposal does not align with Liberal values and say they will do everything they possibly can to stop it.

The offices of Immigration Minister Marc Miller and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc would not comment.

Radio-Canada's questions were transferred to the Department of