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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. “Europe knows from its own history where systems of surveillance, scapegoating and control can lead.”
In announcing the proposals last year, the European Commission described them as “effective and modern procedures” that would increase the deportations of people denied asylum or who had overstayed their visa. One in five people without the right to stay are returned to their country of origin, and the rate has changed little in recent years.
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. “We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe.”
The proposal could also require public services to report undocumented people, a move that would probably deter people from accessing essential healthcare, education and social services.
Médecins du Monde, a humanitarian organisation, said the broader consequences of such a move were alreadyplaying out in Minnesota, where a public healthcare crisis was unfolding after the months-long immigration crackdown.
“Pregnant women, children and people with chronic illnesses simply avoid seeking essential health services, even in emergencies and when their lives are at risk,” said Andrea Soler Eslava of the organisation. “This is unacceptable and can also cause serious public health issues.”
At the end of January, 16 rights experts from the UN wrote to the EU about the proposed regulation. The 19-page missive lists more than a dozen concerns over how the plans could contravene international human rights obligations.
The UN letter also questioned the EU’s motives. “We are concerned that the proposed regulation may, in part, have been motivated by stigmatising migrants for certain homegrown social problems, wrongly suggesting that removing migrants would solve these problems,” it said, citing the housing crisis as an example.
On Monday, the signatories of the statement added to the UN’s concerns, citing draft measures that include the collection of personal data in bulk and easing the exchange of this data across police forces in the EU.
Alamara Khwaja Bettum of Statewatch said: “Increasing surveillance, policing, and racial profiling will only fuel racism and a far-right agenda – not reduce migration. If accepted, these proposed measures will undermine the most basic of civil liberties to disastrous ends, which is the real threat we should be focused on addressing.”
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.
Emmanuel Achiri of the European Network Against Racism said those who were most likely to be affected by the proposed returns regulations were racialised communities across Europe, potentially adding to the widely documented racial discrimination they already face.
“Far from being a neutral migration measure, this proposal constitutes a direct and disproportionate attack on communities that are already marginalised and too often abandoned by policymakers,” he said. “Measures of this kind have no place in a European Union that claims to be serious about addressing structural racism.”
