More than 70 rights organizations yesterday called on the EU to reject a proposal aimed at increasing the deportation of undocumented people, warning that it risks turning everyday spaces, public services and community interactions into tools of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)-style enforcement.
The European Commission in March last year laid out its proposal to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centers in non-EU countries.
The draft regulation on enforcement, which still needs to be agreed on by lawmakers, comes after the far right made gains in the 2024 European parliament elections.
Photo: AFP
In a joint statement, 75 rights organizations from across Europe said that the plans, if approved, could expand and normalize immigration raids and surveillance measures across the continent, while also intensifying racial profiling.
The plans “would consolidate a punitive system, fueled by far-right rhetoric and based on racialized suspicion, denunciation, detention and deportation,” the statement said. “Europe knows from its own history where systems of surveillance, scapegoating and control can lead.”
In announcing the proposals last year, the European Commission described them as “effective and modern procedures” that would increase the deportations of people denied asylum or who had overstayed their visa. One in five people without the right to stay are returned to their country of origin, and the rate has changed little in the past few years.
Yesterday’s statement highlighted the sweeping nature of the proposed measures, with plans to allow police to search private homes for undocumented people without a judicial order, as well as “other relevant premises.”
The result could be “ICE-like raids” in private homes as well as public spaces and workplaces, Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants director Michele LeVoy said.
“We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe,” she said.
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