EU’s deportations plan risks ICE-style enforcement, rights groups warn | European Union
More than 70 rights groups have called on the EU to reject a proposal aimed at increasing deportations of undocumented people, warning that it risks turning everyday spaces, public services and community interactions into ICE-style immigration enforcement tools.
Last March, the European Commission put forward its proposal to increase deportations of people who do not have a legal right to remain in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centers in non-EU countries.
The draft regulation on the implementation, which still needs to be agreed by MEPs, follows the far-right’s gains in the 2024 European Parliament elections.
In a joint statement published on monday 75 human rights organizations across Europe said the plans, if approved, could expand and normalize migration raids and surveillance measures across the continent, as well as intensify racial profiling.
The statement said the plans would “reinforce a punishment system fueled by far-right rhetoric and based on racist suspicion, denunciation, detention and deportation.” “Europe knows from its own history where systems of surveillance, scapegoating and control can lead.”
Inside Announcing offers last yearThe European Commission described these as “effective and modern procedures” that would increase the deportation of people whose asylum claims are rejected or whose visas have expired. One in five people who do not have the right to stay are sent back to their country of origin, and this rate has changed little in recent years.
Monday’s statement highlighted plans to allow police to search private homes for undocumented people without a judicial warrant, as well as “other relevant premises”, highlighting the sweeping nature of the proposed measures.
Michele LeVoy, of the Platform for International Cooperation Against Undocumented Immigrants, said the result could be “ICE-like raids” on private homes as well as public spaces and workplaces. “We cannot support these practices in Europe and at the same time be angry at ICE in the United States.”
The proposal would also require utilities to report undocumented people; This will likely deter people from accessing basic health, education and social services.
Humanitarian organization Médecins du Monde said the broader consequences of such a move were already emerging in Minnesota, where a public health crisis has emerged after months of a crackdown on immigrants.
“Pregnant women, children and people with chronic diseases avoid seeking basic healthcare in emergency situations, even when their lives are at risk,” said Andrea Soler Eslava from the organisation. “This is unacceptable and could also cause serious public health problems.”
At the end of January, 16 rights experts from the UN wrote to the EU About the proposed regulation. The 19-page statement lists more than a dozen concerns about how the plans could violate international human rights obligations.
The UN letter also questioned the EU’s motives. “We are concerned that the proposed regulation may have been motivated in part by stigmatizing immigrants for certain domestic social problems, falsely suggesting that removing immigrants would solve those problems,” he said, citing the housing crisis as an example.
On Monday, signatories of the declaration raised UN concerns by putting forward draft measures that include making it easier to collect personal data in bulk and share it between police forces in the EU.
Statewatch’s Alamara Khwaja Bettum said: “Increasing surveillance, policing and racial profiling will only fuel racism and a far-right agenda, not reduce immigration. If adopted, these proposed measures would have disastrous consequences by undermining the most basic civil liberties; this is the real threat we need to focus on addressing.”
The draft extradition regulation is expected to be voted on by the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee in early March. Last week, the EU moved a step closer to creating offshore centers for migrants after centre-right and far-right MPs came together to support changes that would give authorities more options for deporting asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Emmanuel Achiri of the European Network Against Racism said those most likely to be affected by proposed repatriation regulations were potentially racialized communities in Europe. adding The widely documented racial discrimination they already face.
“Far from being a neutral immigration measure, this proposal constitutes a direct and disproportionate attack on communities already marginalized and often abandoned by policymakers,” he said. “Such measures have no place in a European Union that claims to be serious about combating structural racism.”
