Migrants being transferred from the Lampedusa centre. Credit: Caritas Italiana.

By Silvia Giannelli
ROME, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

“We walk inside an area that is 128 steps long and seven-and-a-half steps wide. This is the path they made for us: two metres of bars over our heads, and upon the bars, two metres of plexiglas. We are like canaries in a cage, like birds of different races all in one cage.”

Ahmed (name changed) is from Africa but he has been living in Italy for 22 years now. On Dec. 20 the police stopped him and asked for his documents. Ahmed does not have them, and so has been kept in the Ponte Galeria Centre for Identification and Expulsion (CIE) of Rome since then. “It’s been two months now, but it feels like two centuries,” he told IPS on phone from the centre."You are lucky if you get out of here with 100 grams of your brain left.” -- Ahmed, a migrant from Africa

Last month, the Caritas Italiana and Migrantes Foundation published their annual dossier on migration, which states that “the true reform of the repatriation system would be the closure of the centres.” Oliviero Forti, director of immigration issues at Caritas explained to IPS the reasons behind such a strong recommendation.

“Helped by Prof. Roberto Cherchi, constitutional lawyer, we came to the conclusion that there is a problem of constitutional legitimacy connected to those places. Precisely for the way they are conceived, built and managed, it is easy to slip into gross violation of human rights.”

The CIE is a part of the Italian system of reception and identification for migrants. Besides, there are the centres of reception (CDA is the Italian acronym), the centres of reception for asylum seekers and refugees (CARA) and the centres of first aid and reception (CSPA). The CSPA in Lampedusa, Sicily, caused outrage when a national newscast circulated a video of naked migrants sprayed for scabies in the December cold.

The CIE are centres for migrants who have no resident permits or identity documents, and for those who have received a deportation order. Yet, as the Caritas and Migrantes dossier reports, the available places are far fewer than the number of migrants in such a state.

As a consequence, placement is decided on a case-by-case basis, following such informal criteria as whether the person is considered a danger to society and whether the chances of identifying and deporting the person are high. This brings disparity in treatment often based on nationality.

Khalid Chaouki, Italian MP from the Democratic Party, visited the Ponte Galeria CIE following a protest by some inmates who literally sewed their mouths shut in January to draw attention to the conditions at the Rome centre. “The situation there was even worse than in Lampedusa, because it is in fact a prison outside the law, where people who often haven’t committed any crime are detained for months,” he told IPS.

Migrants who should be in other centres are often kept in the CIE. “Unfortunately we often found women victims of trafficking, minors, stateless people and also EU citizens, Romanians for instance,” Gabriella Guido, spokesperson for LasciateCIEntrare (Let Us In) told IPS. LasciateCIEntrare is a campaign that began in 2011 after then Italian minister of the interior banned media access to the centres.

That was the year that the maximum holding period was extended from six to 18 months. “Often the problem with the identification is that the foreign consulates are not very cooperative, but if a migrant is not recognised in the first 30 to 60 days, it is not going to happen in 18 months either. The extension of the permanence only increased the stress, the riots and the episodes of self-harm inside the CIE.”

“Nobody sleeps here,” Ahmed said, “apart from the ones who take sleeping pills. Many withdraw into themselves. There is a guy who doesn’t speak any more, and one who talks to himself. You are lucky if you get out of here with 100 grams of your brain left.”

Media access to the CIE now depends on permission from the prefect. Forti says the reception system needs deeper reform. “Regularisation of migrants, fair salaries, legal protection of foreign citizens, all of this means granting a correct culture of work in Italy, both for migrants and for Italian citizens.”

But there is political opposition to this idea. Nicola Molteni, Italian MP for the Northern League told IPS that Italy has been a victim of the “indulgent political behaviour of the last two governments” and that it has been abandoned by the European Union.

“We have 3.2 million unemployed, one million of unemployed youth, and we must give a job to our people first. With these numbers we don’t even need regular migration, not to mention the illegal one, which often leads migrants into the hands of organised crime.”

Molteni and his party defend the CIE. “They have a functionality and necessity which is fundamental,” he said. He says the problem is “the complete lack of a push-back policy, of a control of the borders and of international cooperation with the North African countries to prevent migration.”

At the other end of the political spectrum, Chaouki says the CIE centres are an ideological flag of the Northern League, that have solved no problems. “We need to develop alternatives to those centres, we need to open new regular channels of access to Italy, new procedures of reception and also of deportation that are not harmful to people,” he told IPS.

According to the Caritas dossier, of the 35,872 expulsion proceedings in 2012, 18,592 resulted in actual expulsions. In all 7,944 foreign citizens passed through the CIE, of which only half were eventually deported.

“Despite the huge amount of money spent to maintain these places, they don’t even serve the purpose they were created for. Our conclusion is that their function is rather to placate the anxiety of those who perceive migrants as a threat to security,” said Forti.

Ahmed’s voice becomes harsh over the phone: “We are losing our minds here. If an average Italian could see us now, he would think that is better to keep us locked inside. But they do nothing, because they see nothing.”

Australia’s recent decision to move asylum seekers to offshore detention facilities has alarmed human rights organisations.

“Re-opening offshore detention centres could result in human rights violations, including potentially indefinite detention,” Pia Oberoi, advisor with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) told IPS, despite that international human rights law requires that time limits be placed on immigration detention and that any detention should decided according to individual situations.

A spokesperson for the Australian government told IPS, “The government has been clear that under offshore processing arrangements, asylum seekers transferred to (detention facilities on) Nauru and Manus Island(s) will be processed in accordance with international obligations.” An interactive map of the area can be found here.

Even though some migrants coming to Australia by boat are not entitled to make a valid claim under the Refugee Convention, many are still protected under human rights law, such as victims of trafficking and stateless persons, including protection from refoulement.

The principal of non-refoulement in international law, specifically refugee law, concerns protecting refugees from being returned to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened.

“The principle of non-refoulement has extra-territorial scope, meaning that Australia’s non-refoulement obligations are engaged when asylum seekers and migrants come under its jurisdiction or effective control, even if they have been intercepted on the high seas,” said Oberoi.

The decision to reopen offshore detention facilities was intended by the Australian government to deter future asylum seekers from coming by sea, a dangerous venture often attempted in undersized, overcrowded vessels. More than 100 asylum seekers have drowned attempting to reach Australia in 2012.

“Through regional processing and increasing the humanitarian intake, Australia is aiming to put an end to the tragic consequences of dangerous boat journeys by asylum seekers, and improve the prospects of those wishing to seek asylum in Australia,” said the government spokesperson.

Faulty logic

But Oberoi disagreed with this approach, explaining that “there is no empirical evidence that immigration detention deters irregular migration, or discourages people from seeking asylum”.

In a further effort to attract immigrants to apply through regular immigration channels, the Australian government has increased the country’s intake of natural migrants this year from 13,750 to 20,000, and has committed to taking in to 27,000 by 2017.

Ben Farrell from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Canberra told IPS that UNHCR would prefer “an arrangement which would allow asylum-seekers arriving by boat into Australian territory to be processed in Australia”.

Farrell said that the UNHCR believed in the efficacy of cooperative approaches in the region, noting that such strategies had the potential to grant asylum seekers protection without having to risk dangerous journeys across the ocean.

The policy of offshore detention was abandoned in 2007 by the Australian government heeding complaints that refugees were spending months on the islands before resettlement.

In 2011 a deal with Malaysia was planned whereby unprocessed migrants from Australia were transferred to Malaysia in exchange for processed refugees. However, the deal was rejected by the Australian High Court given that Malaysia is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention.

“For a scheme like the one proposed with Malaysia to be legal, there must be no real risk of breach of Australia’s international human rights obligations and the Refugee Convention in the treatment of asylum seekers and migrants throughout the process in both Australia and Malaysia,” said Oberoi.

Australia is the UNHCR’s largest resettlement country on a per capita basis.

This month, 650 refugees have been picked up trying to reach Australia by boat. The annual number of arrivals by boat represents about two percent of Australia’s total migration.

As of March 2011, the average time spent in detention for asylum seekers arriving in Australia was 213 days.

The closure of one of Spain’s eight immigration detention centres on Wednesday was celebrated by human rights groups, which for years have denounced the prison-like conditions in the centres.

Outer wall of immigrant detention centre in Málaga. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

“We are pleased with the closure of the Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros (CIE – immigrant detention centre) of Málaga, and we congratulate all of the organisations that took part in the struggle to achieve this,” Mamen Castellano, president of the NGO Andalucía Acoge (Andalusía Welcomes), told IPS.

The activist, who works for the rights of immigrants in the southern Spanish region of Andalusía, where Málaga is located, mentioned the “unnecessary suffering of thousands of people who were held there.”

The CIE in Málaga was closed because of its ruinous condition – a situation that was long protested by activists.

Castellano said people should not forget “the history of sexual abuse of female inmates by police, and of fires and suicides” in the Málaga CIE, which opened in 1990 in an old
military barracks in the poor neighbourhood of Capuchinos.

The Interior Ministry had ordered that the CIE be shut down because of the “ruinous state of the installations.” Over the space of 22 years, it housed 20,000 undocumented immigrants, and gained a reputation as the most inhumane of the country’s immigrant detention centres.

Spain’s immigration law states that the CIEs are “public establishments of a non-penitentiary nature, which answer to the Interior Ministry, for the detention and custody of foreigners subject to deportation orders.”

But non-governmental organisations, experts, and even government institutions say the CIEs are “prisons in disguise.” They also complain that undocumented immigrants are held up to 40 days in worse conditions than in prisons, after they are picked up for minor offences like traffic violations.

“Regrettably, the Spanish state will continue to confine human beings and deport them from this country, making use of the other CIEs, which are still open,” Salva Lacruz, head of political advocacy of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), told IPS from the southeastern city of Valencia.

Lacruz said “the closure of a CIE is always good news.” But she lamented that the decision did not form part of “a policy to dismantle the mechanisms of repression of immigrants.”

The CEAR is involved in a campaign to close down the CIEs – “CIEsNo” – along with human rights groups, organisations that fight racism and xenophobia, and community associations. The aim is the “unconditional closure” of the centres.

All aspects of the CIEs, from security to health care and meals, are controlled by the police, who manage the centres and administer the finances. In prisons, by contrast, police only carry out security duties.

In response to the wave of criticism about the way the CIEs operate, and after the deaths of two immigrants in the Madrid and Barcelona centres, Interior Minister Jorge Fernández announced on Jan. 31 that new regulations would be drawn up for the centres.

The draft regulations for the CIEs, whose name would be changed to “Centres for the Controlled Stay of Foreigners” (CECE), have been introduced in Congress and are expected to pass easily because the governing People’s Party holds an absolute majority of seats.

But the regulations proposed by the government of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy have disappointed immigrant advocacy organisations.

“The new regulations leave the existing system fully in place and only include tiny glimpses of what the organisations were asking for,” Castellano lamented.

She criticised the fact that the police will continue to administer the centres, rather than simply being in charge of security and leaving the rest of the task to civilian functionaries.

Castellano said the proposed regulations “legitimate the decision-making power of the director of each CIE,” rather than creating “unified standards and guaranteeing respect for human rights.”

José Cosín, a Málaga lawyer, told IPS that the draft regulations “do not respect the fundamental rights of immigrants” and “ignore the minimum requisites outlined by the ombudsman and by human rights organisations.”

He also described the change in name proposed by the government as “hypocritical”.

And like Castellano, he complained that the centres would continue to be run by the police, “even though the immigrant inmates have committed no crime to justify their detention.”

Removal of the police from the inside of the CIEs would be “an advance in terms of guarantees for the rights of the inmates,” Lacruz said.

In the last two years, the severe economic crisis that has shaken Spanish society and driven up the unemployment rate to record highs has failed to curb the arrival of immigrants.

In 2011, there were 5.7 million foreign nationals, and one million foreign-born citizens, in this southern European country of 47 million people. An estimated 700,000 immigrants are undocumented.

That year, 5,443 undocumented immigrants came to this country, according to an Interior Ministry report, “Balance de Lucha contra la Inmigración Ilegal” (summary of the struggle against illegal immigration), published in February.

The biggest surge in undocumented immigrant flows in Spain occurred in 2006, when 33,737 entered the country.

According to official figures, 30,792 immigrants were deported in 2011, 629 more than in 2010.

Cosín said the closure of the Málaga CIE “highlights the harsh conditions to which we subject immigrants in Spain,” precisely at a time when the crisis is pushing Spanish citizens to emigrate, to escape the 24 percent unemployment rate.

“The closure of the centre where rape and other human rights violations have occurred is not a step forward,” because the immigrants have been transferred over the last few weeks to the CIE in the southern city of Algeciras, “where conditions are also worse than in the prisons,” he said.