French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced last week that he had stripped 147 'radicalized' migrants of their refugee status. This announcement causes legal issues, particularly regarding its implementation. It also raises questions about the impartiality of Ofpra, the body responsible for granting international protection.
Since the beginning of the year, more than 4,000 people have been taken by the Algerian police to the border with Niger, to a place in the middle of the desert nicknamed "point zero". Abandoned there, some get lost and are never found. In a new report, MSF denounces these illegal deportations that continue despite border closure.
Germany deported more than 750 people to Africa in 2020. Most African countries are ill-prepared to welcome rejected asylum seekers, and the coronavirus could make matters worse, activists say.
Some migrants held in administrative detention centers (CRA) in France have been sent to prison for refusing to take PCR tests. Lawyers have called the practice "illegal" and denounced it as a violation of "fundamental rights".
A group of 26 rejected asylum seekers deported from Germany has arrived in Kabul. Germany resumed deportations to Afghanistan last month, after a suspension due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The ban on deportations of Syrian nationals deemed to pose a risk to security in Germany will expire at the end of the year. The interior ministers of Germany's state governments had failed to agree on the terms of an extension. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the expulsions will become possible on the practical level.
A number of countries, especially north-west African nations, are reluctant to issue consular papers for their undocumented nationals in France. These papers are needed for deportation. The problem is particularly acute for irregular migrants on terror watch-lists who are not wanted back in their home countries. To speed up expulsions, France has threatened to reduce visas to the countries in question.
Ten men were deported from Germany to Ethiopia last week. Asylum seeker support groups say deportations should be stopped during the COVID pandemic.
The European Union looks poised to find broad political agreement on a new EU migration pact. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that the 27 member states might be able to adopt the new legislation before the end of the year.
At the beginning of October, a flight chartered by the British Home Office left the UK for France with just one migrant on board. Under the Dublin agreement, the UK authorities say he should pursue his asylum claim in France. On Wednesday, October 7, the man’s lawyers went to court in France to try and stop his repatriation to Africa.
According to reports in several British newspapers, the British government is planning to provide weekly flights to return migrants arriving in the UK via the Channel. The plans were revealed after a freedom of information request made by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
The so-called "Orderly Return Law" (Geordnete-Rückkehr-Gesetz), which was enacted in Germany a year ago has failed to achieve its objective of raising the number of deportations in the first six months of its existence.