The French interior minister says he wants to deport "any foreigner" who has committed "serious acts" -- regardless of their administrative status in France. InfoMigrants reviews what the law actually says.
A video received by InfoMigrants shows a dozen women in Lithuania's Medininkai camp partially undressed, obviously frightened and with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. Witnesses say that Lithuanian guards arrested these migrants in their rooms, without giving them time to dress. Lithuanian authorities denied any knowledge of what had happened.
All of the left-wing candidates in the French presidential election have detailed immigration policies in their campaign manifestos. Some proposals, such as the regularization of undocumented migrants and the end of bone testing for unaccompanied minors, are shared by all of the candidates. InfoMigrants explores where they differ.
InfoMigrants contacted Eric*, an African migrant who has been locked up inside the Pabradé migrant camp in Lithuania for several months. He said he is under permanent pressure from the Lithuanian military in the camp, who harass the migrants to "go home".
Many migrants who have arrived from neighboring Belarus are currently stuck in the Pabradé camp in Lithuania that many have compared to a prison. Sekou, an asylum seeker from Guinea, has been there for seven months. He says the living conditions are deplorable and that the asylum interviews are a "charade" with an automatically negative outcome.
The year 2021 was another desperately hard year for migrants. More died at sea, thousands were stranded on the border between Belarus and Poland, and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan forced huge numbers into exile. But there were also some heartwarming positives: laws to protect the most vulnerable, stories of individual success and of communities in support of one another.
Four days after the Channel shipwreck that claimed the lives of 27 migrants, the French interior minister claimed that some migrants were resorting to blackmail and had threatened to throw their babies into the water if police intercepted them at sea. Aid groups in northern France are "shocked" by the remarks.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced additional methods to prevent migrant crossings from northern France to the English coast at the start of this week. Ultra-modern equipment will be used to try to lower the numbers attempting to cross the English Channel. This comes in the same week as the Channel experienced its deadliest migrant shipwreck.
Many Bangladeshis in France have complained that since the start of the year their asylum applications have been dismissed by order without a hearing at the National Asylum Court (CNDA). Lawyers say these automatic rejections have become commonplace.
Hundreds of migrants in the Nea Kavala camp in northern Greece demonstrated on October 13 to protest the implementation of a new protocol that prevents them from accessing food. According to those contacted by InfoMigrants, nearly half of the 1,200 residents are no longer receiving food.
Greek coroner Pavlos Pavlidis autopsies all the bodies of migrants found in the Evros region, bordering Turkey. He tries to collect as much information as possible on each of them and keeps all their personal belongings to give them back their name and their dignity.
For a number of years, the bodies of unidentified migrants have lain in a small cemetery in Sidiro, a small Greek village a few miles from the Turkish border. Some of them drowned while trying to cross the Evros River, others died of hypothermia or were victims of road accidents. There are reportedly 200 bodies buried there, without names or dates.