Is there a maximum length of time someone can be held in immigration detention?

There is no fixed maximum length set in advance for immigration detention in Canada — it is not structured as a sentence with a defined end date, but rather as an ongoing measure that must be justified at each regular review, meaning detention can, in principle, continue as long as the grounds for it and the absence of workable alternatives keep being found to justify it.

That said, length is not irrelevant — quite the opposite. As detention continues over a longer period, the Immigration Division is expected to scrutinize it more closely, weighing the ongoing necessity of detention more heavily against the person's circumstances and the practicality of alternatives, and prolonged detention without a clear and realistic path to removal or resolution becomes progressively harder to justify. Courts have also recognized that indefinite detention raises serious concerns that can be raised directly at a review or through other legal avenues.

Because there is no automatic release date to count down to, and because the strength of an argument against continued detention generally grows over time, anyone detained for an extended period should treat each successive review as an increasingly important opportunity, and get legal advice specifically focused on the length of detention as its own independent argument for release.