Obscure, Minimize, and Distract: The Canadian State's Playbook on the Characterization and Justification of Immigration Detention

State discourse on immigration detention reveals a concerted effort to obscure the realities of immigration detention in Canada. This paper exposes Canadian statutes and federally published websites as non-neutral domains where discursive violence takes place and where enactments of state violence are justified. Although it positions itself as a welcoming 'safe haven' for migrants, the Canadian state distracts us from the punitive nature of indefinite immigration detention, minimizes the number of migrants detained, and inflates the danger that migrants pose to Canadian society and borders. The Canadian state's moral authority to enforce immigration detention must not be accepted as natural, lest we naturalize the violence, harm, and settler domination that the state enacts against 'undesirable' migrants. Applying a Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper investigates Canadian state and state agency discourses on/of immigration detention in order to reveal the discursive strategies the state employs to characterize and justify immigration detention.