The European Union announced a plan on Tuesday to deport more migrants and make so-called “return centers” in second places.
The new program would make common laws across the 27-member alliance but that immigration regulators in one EU country can maintain a imprisonment order issued by another EU state.
” Today only around 20 % of those who have a return decision leave Europe. This number is by far to low”, Western Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
The program may even change the rules to help EU countries to deliver rejected asylum applicants to third countries.
” We are creating the opportunity for member state to discover new solutions for profit”, Magnus Brunner, the EU director for movement, told a press event in Strasbourg.
Rights organizations condemn ‘ transfer hubs’
Under current rules, the EU is only arrest rejected asylum applicants back to their country of origin or a state they transited from, unless they agree then.
Transfer hubs are a metaphor for repatriation centers that would be set up in non-EU nations.
The EU plans to arrest rejected asylum seekers to these “return centers” until they can get deported back to their countries of origin.
But rights organizations say the plan undermines the right to prison.
” We can probably anticipate more people being locked up in emigration detention facilities across Europe, families separated and people sent to countries they don’t actually know”, said Silvia Carta from the Program for International Cooperation on Illegal Migrants.
The EU would not build or manage the return hubs. Rather, it would negotiate with countries willing to take rejected asylum seekers.
Marta Welander from the International Rescue Committee said this could increase the risk of rights violations.
” Keeping people deliberately out of sight and out of mind is not a sustainable solution to Europe’s migration challenges”, she said.
