EU pushes through migration overhaul with more deportations and detention centres abroad
The European Union has embarked on a sweeping overhaul of its immigration policy in a move designed to speed up deportations and establish contentious detention centers abroad. Human rights groups have drawn parallels between these new measures and the aggressive immigration strategies implemented by the Trump administration.
Nicholas Ioannides, Deputy Minister of Immigration of Cyprus, who currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said: “The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase the return of people who do not have the legal right to stay in the EU.” The agreement was finalized at the “tripartite” meeting attended by the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament on Monday evening.
Dutch MP Malik Azmani, who guided the regulation through the European Parliament, emphasized the urgency. “Europe cannot afford another pause,” he said. “There is an urgent need for an effective return policy with higher rates of return.” Mr Azmani emphasized that only 28 percent of rejected asylum seekers returned to their country of origin, with the majority remaining within the EU. “This situation is extremely worrying. It shakes public confidence in our common migration policies.”
Critics likened the new regulations to the immigration policies of the Trump administration, which struck a series of undisclosed deals with various countries to deport thousands of people to countries that do not belong to them. Similarly, the UK had planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, but the attempt was mired in legal challenges and was ultimately abandoned following a change of government in July 2024.
Many EU governments are already in talks with third countries
“Across the Atlantic, we are seeing the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal enforcement against immigrants,” said Silvia Carter, spokeswoman for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Immigrants, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Europe should learn from the harms rather than create its own version of this model.”
He said law enforcement officers on the bloc no longer need permission from judges to raid private residences or public institutions such as hospitals. “The regulation will create a brutal detention and deportation machine.”
The interim agreement will now go to EU MPs and governments, where approval is likely to be swift.
“These new rules will enable faster, simpler and more effective procedures across the European Union for the return of non-EU nationals who do not have the right to stay, with full respect for international law and fundamental rights,” said Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s technology commissioner.
EU member states will soon be able to make bilateral agreements with countries outside the bloc to build deportation centres. At least five EU countries (Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece) are already in talks with third countries, mostly in Africa, to host “return centres” modeled on Italy’s detention agreement with Albania.
“We are delivering the tools that will enable member states to conclude their agreements and arrangements with third countries,” Azmani said.
Mélissa Camara, a lawmaker from the French Green Party, said the agreement was a “historic setback” for human rights in the bloc.
“Legalization of return centers outside the European Union, green light for the detention of minors, home visits inspired by ICE practices: the legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology is now complete,” he said.
EU migration policy has moved steadily to the right
The EU has steadily tightened its immigration policies after right-wing parties won a majority of votes in some countries in the 2024 European Parliament elections. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, said the new measures would prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by the civil war in Syria, in which nearly 1 million people sought asylum.
The 2015 refugee crisis and successive years of irregular migration to Europe, fueled by people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, have led to a rightward shift in the bloc’s politics not dissimilar to the anti-immigrant sentiment that has animated the “red wave” in the 2024 elections in the United States.
After running a successful campaign on tougher immigration policies, the EU’s largest political group, the European People’s Party, which won that election, began immigration reform talks with centrist and left-wing parties but eventually sidestepped them by allying with the far right, asylum rights activist Carter said. “There has been an unprecedented change in the European Parliament.”
Advocacy groups have warned that the regulation would deeply cut into protections provided by the EU’s core regulation on human rights and expose people to risks outside the bloc.
“This agreement will give governments much broader powers to detain and deport people,” said Marta Welander, spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization International Rescue Committee. “It looks set to normalize immigration raids, expand the use of detention in prison-like facilities outside EU territory that are essentially legal black holes, and increase the risk of people being deported to countries where they could face persecution, torture or worse.”
