Series #1: Immigration enforcement

Amid a political environment in which immigration is increasingly blamed for a variety of issues, from affordability to healthcare and jobs, De Facto's first issue looks at how law enforcement is impacting the lives of immigrants — starting with a sharp rise in calls to border enforcement by the Vancouver Police Department starting in 2023.

Vancouver cops are calling border enforcement more than ever. Community members fear that puts them in danger

Migrant sex workers say they’re ‘more afraid of police than perpetrators of a crime,’ as new data reveals VPD ‘immigration status checks’ spiked 80% to nearly 1,000 people in two years

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De Facto staff writer David P. Ball looks back on his reporting a decade ago and on the activists that brought the issue of police involvement in immigration enforcement to the fore following the death of Lucía Vega Jiménez in a cell while she awaited deportation following a transit fare check.

How a Mexican woman’s 2013 death in custody of Canada’s ‘de facto ICE agents’ sparked a movement

Detained at a transit fare check, Lucía Vega Jiménez died awaiting deportation back to a violent ex-boyfriend. An inquest revealed shocking details

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Metro Vancouver Transit Police similarly saw a rise in its calls to border enforcement in recent years. But our investigation found the police force appears to be breaking its own rules, with a striking difference between the number of Canada Border Services Agency calls reported by Transit Police and those reported by CBSA itself.

Transit Police are calling border enforcement more — but you wouldn’t know that from their own records

In 2024, Metro Vancouver transit cops’ immigration calls reached their highest in a decade. But not even a tenth of them went into daily duty reports as required

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Expanding on his comments in our first story, our interview with immigration lawyer Zool Suleman on his concerns over rising calls to CBSA by local police.

‘A troubling trend’: Lawyer Zool Suleman on rising cop-immigration collaboration

Everyday contact with police, such as transit fare-checks, is getting migrants reported to the feds. Why this expert finds De Facto’s newly revealed data ‘disturbing’

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And immigrants, activists and lawyers say the troubling disparities created by our existing immigration system — and the ill-effects of enforcement — will only get worse with the implementation of Bill C-12.

‘A two-tier system’: Rights groups say the immigration system is built on exploitation. A new law could make it even worse

With Bill C-12 now in force, volunteers build a mobile office for migrant workers amid escalating concerns over deportations and asylum restrictions

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More to come...