Blog Post.
A detention review is a hearing where an Immigration Division member decides whether you stay in immigration detention or are released. Expect it within 48 hours of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) taking you into custody, expect CBSA to present its case first, and expect a decision at the end of the hearing.
Here is how to prepare, in order:
Kingwell Immigration Law is a Toronto-based immigration law firm that acts for people facing a detention review anywhere in Canada. Below is what each of those steps involves in practice, and what the hearing itself will look like.
Preparation is not about explaining your whole immigration history. It is about answering one narrow question: what has to be true for the member to feel comfortable releasing you today?
The most common preparation mistake is bringing sympathy rather than structure. Our lawyers handle each of these steps for you, so the work that decides the outcome is not left to a relative making phone calls from a waiting room.
A detention review is a hearing before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). A member of the Immigration Division hears from both sides and decides whether you are released or stay in detention.
The IRB is like a court but less formal. Its decisions are legally binding, and the member is independent of CBSA.
Three participants matter at the hearing. The member decides the outcome.
CBSA counsel, also called the Minister’s counsel or Minister’s representative, explains why you were detained. They can argue for continued detention or recommend your release.
You and your counsel respond, challenge the evidence, and put forward an alternative. This is your only opportunity to speak directly to the person making the decision.
Hearings are scheduled as virtual hearings by default, though an in-person hearing can be requested in writing. You may be held at an immigration holding centre, such as the one in Toronto, or in a provincial correctional facility.
We deal with the Immigration Division and CBSA counsel directly on your behalf, so you are not working out who does what from inside a holding cell.
Kingwell Immigration Law moves quickly on detention files because the timeline leaves no room to wait. We take the call, obtain disclosure from CBSA, work out which ground is really in play, and start building a release plan the same day.
Daniel Kingwell has practised immigration law since 2001 and is a Law Society of Ontario Certified Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law. He describes this side of the practice plainly: “I’m sort of the fire department.”
Here is what we do on a detention file:
Our team includes three lawyers and three registered consultants, and we appear regularly before the Immigration Division, the Immigration Appeal Division, and the Federal Court. If your first review has already gone badly, that is not the end of the matter, and we can take over a file at any point in the review cycle.
CBSA cannot detain you simply because it wants to. The starting position under section 58 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is that the Immigration Division must order your release unless one of a fixed set of grounds is made out.
That inadmissibility ground was broadened in recent years to include sanctions and transborder criminality, so older guidance you may find elsewhere is incomplete. More than one ground can be raised at once, and each has to be answered separately.
Ground for detention | Evidence that tends to answer it |
Danger to the public | Completed treatment or counselling records, sentencing reasons showing rehabilitation, a written supervision plan, letters from a treating professional |
Unlikely to appear | A record of attending past appointments, a fixed address, an employment letter, close family ties, willingness to report weekly |
Reasonable suspicion of inadmissibility | Evidence the investigation has stalled, a timeline of what CBSA has and has not done, the length of time already spent waiting |
Identity not established | Documents obtained from relatives abroad, consular correspondence, sworn statements from family, written proof of every request you have made |
At Kingwell Immigration Law, we identify which ground is genuinely driving the detention and build the response around it, rather than answering allegations that were never the real obstacle.
💡 Additional reading: our post on the deportation letter explains the notice CBSA sends when it moves to enforce removal.
This point works in your favour, and it is the one most people get wrong. The legislation places the onus on the Minister, meaning release is the default position, and CBSA has to justify keeping you.
The Federal Court of Appeal confirmed this reading in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Thanabalasingham, 2004 FCA 4. The initial burden of showing that continued detention is warranted rests with the party proposing detention, not with you.
We hold CBSA to that burden rather than treating the hearing as your chance to explain yourself, and we advise you on where its case is thinnest.
Even where a ground for detention exists, the member cannot stop there. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations require a further set of factors to be considered before detention continues.
Those factors are:
These factors gain weight as time passes. A ground that comfortably justified detention at the 48-hour mark can become insufficient several reviews later, particularly where the delay is not yours, and the alternative on offer has improved.
Our role is to put these factors before the member in the order that helps you most, and to press the ones CBSA would rather not discuss.
A detention review usually takes under an hour and follows a predictable sequence. The member runs the hearing, and everyone speaks in turn.
The outcome is one of three things: release without conditions, release with conditions, or continued detention. We speak for you throughout, so you are never asked to argue your own case against CBSA counsel in front of the person deciding it.
A release plan is your proposed alternative to detention. It is a set of conditions you volunteer to accept, and it works by reducing the specific risk CBSA has raised.
Conditions the Immigration Division commonly imposes include:
The plan should be tighter than feels comfortable, because a member sitting on the fence will accept daily reporting and a live-in supervisor long before a vague promise to stay in touch. We design the plan around the risk the member is being asked to worry about, and we advise you honestly about which conditions you can realistically live with.
A bondsperson is the person who puts money behind your release. Their job is to satisfy the member that you have something real to lose if you breach your conditions.
The legislation allows the Immigration Division to impose either type of bond as a condition of release:
There is no fixed dollar amount. The member sets the figure based on what the bondsperson can afford and how much risk the case presents, so a modest bond from someone who sees you daily can outperform a large one from a distant relative.
A bondsperson can be a friend, a family member, an employer, a community worker, or in some circumstances the detained person themselves. They can complete a Bondsperson Information form in advance, which lets the member and CBSA review their details before the hearing rather than during it.
Our team assesses and prepares your bondsperson beforehand, because a willing bondsperson who is unprepared can sink an otherwise strong release plan.
If the member orders your continued detention, the file does not go quiet. Another review must be held within 7 days, and after that at least once every 30 days until you are released or removed from Canada.
If you are released, the conditions attached to your release stay in force until you leave Canada or until they are changed or cancelled. Breaching them can lead to re-arrest, and it can also cost your bondsperson their money.
Conditions are not permanent either. If your circumstances change, you can write to the Immigration Division asking to vary or cancel a condition, and the IRB publishes the relevant form alongside its guidance on detention review hearings.
Copies of any such request must go to CBSA at the same time. We stay on the file between hearings, monitor what changes, and advise you when something has shifted enough to justify asking the Immigration Division for an early review.
This is the part most general guidance leaves out. A 7-day or 30-day review is not a clean slate, and treating it like one is the most common reason people stay detained longer than they need to.
In Thanabalasingham, the Federal Court of Appeal also held that a member at a later review must give clear and compelling reasons before departing from a previous decision to detain. The practical effect is that the first hearing sets an anchor, and every review after it starts from that anchor rather than from zero.
What this means is simple: each review needs something genuinely new. A new bondsperson, a newly obtained passport, a completed treatment program, or evidence that CBSA has made no progress in six weeks gives the member the material they need to change course, whereas the same arguments repeated to a different member will usually produce the same result.
Where an identity case stalls because a foreign government will not respond, the argument shifts away from identity itself and towards the length of the detention and the absence of any foreseeable endpoint. An unenforceable removal order creates the same difficulty, because the member must weigh how long detention is likely to continue when removal has no realistic timeline.
Two further routes exist when reviews stop producing results.
The first is judicial review at the Federal Court, which requires leave of the Court before a detention decision can be challenged.
The second is habeas corpus at a provincial superior court, which in Ontario means the Superior Court of Justice. The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed in Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v Chhina, 2019 SCC 29, that this route stays open to immigration detainees where the detention has become lengthy and its endpoint uncertain.
Daniel Kingwell and our team build each review on the last, so that by the time you appear before a member again there is something new for them to act on.
Detention reviews reward preparation, and preparation takes someone who has done this before. Kingwell Immigration Law steps in at the point CBSA makes the arrest, works out which ground is really driving the detention, and builds the release plan and bond package that gives the member a reason to say yes.
Wherever in Canada you or your family member is being held, our lawyers can open the file today and advise you on what the first hearing is realistically likely to produce.
Yes, though each facility sets its own rules, and Kingwell Immigration Law can confirm them for the centre holding your relative. Immigration holding centres and provincial jails run separate visiting hours, identification requirements, and booking systems. Always call ahead, because unbooked visitors are routinely turned away.
Most Immigration Division hearings are open to the public, which Kingwell Immigration Law flags early so clients are not caught out. Evidence, submissions, and the audio recording become public record, and the media can request them. We can apply for a confidentiality order where safety or privacy is at risk.
Yes, and Kingwell Immigration Law keeps those files running while a client remains in custody. Detention pauses nothing, so filing deadlines still apply and a missed date can see a claim declared abandoned. Refugee Protection Division hearings can also be scheduled while someone is still detained.
Sometimes, though Kingwell Immigration Law will only request an adjournment where it genuinely helps. The Immigration Division grants them sparingly because the 48-hour timeline is statutory, but short delays are allowed to let counsel be retained or a bondsperson attend. Detention continues throughout any adjournment.
Yes, the Immigration and Refugee Board provides interpreters at no cost, and Kingwell Immigration Law requests one when we open the file. Tell the member immediately if nobody is present or you cannot follow the interpretation. Coverage runs across the whole hearing, including your own evidence.
