More than 70 rights organisations have 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 ICE-style immigration enforcement.
Last March, the European Commission laid out its proposal to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centres in non-EU countries. The draft regulation on enforcement, which still needs to be agreed on by MEPs, comes after the far right made gains in the 2024 European parliament elections.
In a joint statement published on Monday, 75 rights organisations from across Europe said that the plans, if approved, could expand and normalise immigration raids and surveillance measures across the continent while also intensifying racial profiling. The plans “would consolidate a punitive system, fuelled by far-right rhetoric and based on racialised suspicion, denunciation, detention and deportation,” the statement said.
Monday’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, said Michele LeVoy of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.
The proposal could also result in public services being required to report undocumented people, a move that would probably deter people from accessing essential healthcare, education and social services. At the end of January, 16 rights experts from the UN wrote to the EU about the proposed regulation, listing more than a dozen concerns over how the plans could contravene international human rights obligations.
The draft returns regulation is due to be voted on by the European parliament’s civil liberties committee in early March. Last week the EU moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants after centre-right and far-right MEPs united to back changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
