Can a state detain non-citizens without a court promptly checking why?
Whether non-citizens can be held without prompt judicial review, across courts and a venue-shifting campaign.
What worked, what failed, what is reusable.
Target the missing safeguard. Lawyers for Human Rights (South African Constitutional Court) struck down provisions allowing prolonged detention without prompt judicial review. The handle was the safeguard, not the detention power itself.
Conditions plus procedure. Ilias and Ahmed (Strasbourg) found violations tied to transit-zone confinement and an inadequate assessment of risk on removal. M.S.S. set a reception-and-detention-conditions floor under Article 3.
Move the venue. The Canadian End Immigration Detention campaign got every province to stop using provincial jails for immigration detention by September 2025. When the detention-in-principle fight is slow, move the venue fight.
Reusable kit: attack the absent prompt-review safeguard, build the conditions record, and where the principle will not move, move the venue.
Research resource, not legal advice. Read the original source before acting. Cases and campaigns are gathered by shared issue tags; some may be machine-extracted and pending human review.