What to Expect from Canada Immigration in 2026

Canadian immigration is already changing, with new policies and rule updates introduced earlier this year. It comes as no surprise that the start of a new year has brought changes in how people can come to Canada, stay in Canada, and become permanent residents or citizens. Although some Canadian immigration pathways have become more limited, others are expanding depending on who you are and where you are coming from.

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Report: Immigration Detention Is Bigger, Harsher, and Less Accountable Than Ever

Trump Administration Targets People with No Criminal Record and Uses Detention to Pressure Them to Give Up Their Cases 

Washington DC, Jan. 14 Wednesday — A new report released today by the American Immigration Council shows that the Trump administration is locking up hundreds of thousands of people— most with no criminal record—into a harsh immigration detention system that makes it near impossible to fight their cases or secure release.  

READ THE REPORT HERE.

The report, Immigration Detention Expansion in Trump’s Second Term, reveals how historic funding increases and aggressive enforcement tactics have pushed immigration detention to the highest level in U.S. history. Rather than addressing serious public safety threats, the government is spending billions on mass detention to pressure people who pose no threat to give up their cases and accept deportation. 

As the Trump administration expands its mass deportation agenda, the consequences extend far beyond detention centers. DHS’s aggressive tactics during large-scale enforcement actions in American neighborhoods around the country have already led to tragic, preventable deaths, revealing the human cost of an immigration enforcement system that operates with little oversight or accountability. 

“This has absolutely nothing to do with law and order. Under mass deportation, we’re seeing the construction of a mass immigration detention system on a scale the United States has never seen, in which people with no criminal record are routinely locked up with no clear path to release,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Over the next three years, billions of more dollars will be poured into a detention system that is on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system. The goal is not public safety, but to pressure people into giving up their rights and accepting deportation.” 

READ THE REPORT HERE.

According to the report, the number of people held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention rose nearly 75 percent in 2025, climbing from roughly 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by the start of December, the highest level ever recorded. And with Congress authorizing $45 billion dollars in new detention funding, the report warns that the system could more than triple in size over the next four years. 

Major findings of the report include: 

• There is a dramatic shift in who is being detained. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent in Trump’s first year, driven by increases in tactics like “at-large” arrests, roving patrols, worksite raids, and re-arrests of people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins. The percent of people arrested by ICE and held in detention with no criminal record rose from 6 percent in January to 41 percent by December. 

• The detention system has expanded so rapidly that already deleterious conditions have worsened. Through the start of December, ICE was using over 100 more facilities to detain immigrants than at the start of the year. For the first time ever, thousands of immigrants arrested in the interior are being detained in hastily-constructed tent camps, where conditions are brutal. More people died in ICE detention in 2025 than in the last four years combined. 

• People are stripped of their chance to ask a judge for release. New policies have made prolonged, indefinite detention the norm. The Trump administration is pursuing policies that strip millions of people, if they are detained, of the right to have a bond hearing where they can make a case to be released into their community while their immigration case is under review, including for those with decades of life in the United States.  

• The administration is using detention to drive up deportations. By November 2025, for every person released from ICE detention, more than fourteen were deported directly from custody. This is compared to an approximate one-to-two ratio from a year earlier.   

• As the administration expands detention, it is simultaneously gutting oversight. The rapid growth of detention has been paired with deep cuts to internal watchdogs and new restrictions on congressional inspections. This erosion of oversight has consequences that extend beyond detention facilities themselves: as ICE is operating with fewer checks on its authority, aggressive interior enforcement in cities has led to preventable harm and deaths, underscoring how a lack of accountability is putting lives at risk.  

“The Trump administration continues to falsely claim it’s going after the ‘worst of the worst,’ but public safety is just a pretext for locking up immigrants and pushing them to abdicate their cases.,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “Horrific conditions inside detention facilities break people into accepting deportation which fuels the administration’s inhumane deportation quotas and goals.” 

The report profiles three people whose experiences illustrate the real-world impact of this historic expansion of detention: 

• A green card holder and father of two, detained by ICE at an airport because of a past conviction he was told would not jeopardize his legal status. ICE then neglected his medical issues for months while he was detained. 

• An asylum seeker who was granted humanitarian protection by an immigration judge, yet remains detained months later, without explanation, as ICE seeks to deport her to a third country, and who says she was treated better in federal prison when serving time for an immigration offense.  

• A DACA recipient, detained following a criminal arrest, who was transferred repeatedly across the country as ICE searched for available bed space and witnessed consistently poor conditions across multiple different detention centers. 

With billions of additional dollars already approved, the report warns that immigration detention is poised to grow even larger, deepening the human, legal, and financial costs for families, communities, and the country as a whole. 

“This is a system built to produce deportations, not justice,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “When detention becomes the default response to immigration cases, the costs are borne by everyone. Families are torn apart, due process is set aside, and billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on these unnecessary and cruel policies that do nothing to increase public safety.”

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Can Renee Good’s Family Sue ICE in the Aftermath of Her Killing? The Answer Is Complicated

On the snowy streets of Minneapolis in the early days of January 2026, an ICE officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good—a U.S. citizen and mother driving a Honda Pilot with stuffed animals hanging out of the glove compartment. She had reportedly just dropped off her six-year-old child at school. Multiple bystander videos captured the shooting and the distressing aftermath, which included ICE agents preventing a doctor from reaching Good. These images compound what the U.S. has experienced since the start of the second Trump administration – social media feeds filled with videos of ICE and Border Patrol agents smashing car windows during enforcement and firing pepper spray projectiles and tear gas canisters at those who showed up to witness the human toll of immigration enforcement in their communities.

In the wake of Good’s killing, many have naturally asked how her family might hold the individual officer or federal government accountable for her death. The answer is complicated, and any legal fight is riddled with pitfalls.

The well-known legal defense of qualified immunity shields law enforcement agents from having to defend against civil rights lawsuits for monetary compensation (called “damages”) unless the right was “clearly established” such that a “reasonable officer” would understand his conduct violated the law.

What is less well understood is that—thanks to the Supreme Court—there is virtually no way left to sue individual federal officers for monetary damages for violating individuals’ constitutional rights. Local and state law enforcement who violate people’s rights can be sued for under a Reconstruction-era law, 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. No similar statute exists for federal agents. Instead, the Supreme Court in 1971 ruled in a case called Bivens v. Six Unnamed Known Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that an individual could sue federal drug agents for violating his Fourth Amendment rights in conducting an unlawful search and arrest.

But since that time—and especially under the Roberts Court—the Supreme Court has eviscerated Bivens. From Border Patrol agents fatally shooting a Mexican teenager across the U.S.-Mexico border to agents on the U.S.-Canada border allegedly throwing the owner of a bed and breakfast to the ground and later retaliating against him, the Supreme Court made clear that it will not allow suits against federal officers in any circumstances beyond the facts of Bivens itself and two (now very dated) additional cases. While the Court has not overruled Bivens, it has severely weakened its utility.

Vice President J.D. Vance wrongly claimed that the ICE officer who shot Renee Good is entitled to “absolute immunity.” That is patently incorrect—federal agents acting under color of law can potentially be prosecuted criminally for willfully depriving an individual of their civil rights. A state prosecution is also theoretically possible.

In addition, individuals can still sue the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for injuries committed at the hands of federal employees. Indeed, the federal government paid nearly $5 million to settle an FTCA case brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman killed by a Capitol Police officer on January 6, 2021 while storming the Capitol.

But the reality is that obtaining legal accountability for actions like the killing of Renee Good through civil lawsuits is challenging by design.

DHS agents have committed excessive force before this administration. During an ICE/IRS raid on a meatpacking plant in East Tennessee in 2018, surveillance video captured an ICE agent putting his boot on the neck of a worker who was lying face down on the floor for 25 seconds—a dangerous practice that could result in serious injury or death. That same agent was accused of punching a different worker in the face during the raid. The only reason the “boot to the neck” incident came to light at all was because of a civil lawsuit against the individual agents.

If courts rule that individuals cannot sue federal agents for rights violations or DHS agents successfully assert qualified immunity in such cases, such evidence may never be revealed. With the ubiquity of smartphone cameras and the growing brazenness of DHS’ violence on the streets of U.S. cities, growing public awareness of law enforcement abuse has the potential to lead to policy change. Efforts to enact federal statutes to codify Bivens have not progressed in Congress, but could gain momentum as people from across the ideological spectrum push back against federal law enforcement overreach.

No amount of money will bring back people killed by federal agents, but money damages are an important part of the U.S. legal system, promoting accountability and serving as a deterrent against future rights abuses. A right without a remedy is a hollow promise—all but ensuring that federal agents will continue to engage in actions that endanger and kill people.

Photo by Chad Davis

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