Photo credit: Aljazeera
Italy has sent 40 failed asylum seekers to Albania.
Reuters reports that they are to be held until repatriation to their home countries in vacant, Italian-run detention centres built for a stalled migration deterrent scheme.
Italy built a couple of facilities in Albania last year intending to use them to process asylum requests from migrants picked up at sea. But the scheme has been put on hold after the courts annulled the transfer of sea migrants. Government was forced to bring them to Italy to assess their legal situation.
Facing criticism from the opposition over the legal confusion, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s conservative coalition last month decided to use Albania instead as a staging post for people whose asylum bids have already been turned down.
Under Italian law, failed asylum seekers can be detained for up to 18 months while awaiting deportation. Italy has a poor record on the repatriation of illegal immigrants.
Meloni initially hoped that the two camps would be able to process some 36,000 male asylum applicants per year from a government list of safe countries, with the idea of swiftly repatriating them after the likely rejection of their requests.
However, the government still hopes to revert to its original plan and is waiting on a ruling from the European Union’s Court of Justice which could compel Italian judges to process the new asylum seekers dispatched to Albania.
