Italy: Rejected asylum applicants must pay to avoid detention

Rome: Asylum seekers will be expected pay a ‘bail’ of about €5,000 to avoid being locked up in a pre-removal detention center when they are appealing their rejection, the Italian government has announced.

A decree published by the interior ministry in the official gazette on Friday (September 22) said asylum seekers whose applications are refused will have to pay €4,938, or they face being detained in a pre-removal reception center (CPR) while waiting for their appeals to be examined.

The rule will apply to people who have “eluded or tried to elude controls and (come from) a ‘safe’ country,” the decree said. The African countries considered safe by the Italian government are Tunisia, Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria and Senegal.

Currently, migrants to Italy who apply for asylum are free to move within the country while their application is reviewed.

The move came under attack from human rights groups. “It is ridiculous. Who has got 5,000 euros?” said Anna Brambilla, a lawyer and member of the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI).

There are ten pre-removal CPR centers in Italy, with a capacity to hold 619 people. But the government announced last week that it would double the number, placing one in each of the 20 regions.

It also said that it would increase the amount of time people could be detained to 18 months from three months.

“They [the government] are looking to make detention for migrants the norm, but it is hard to see how they can do that,” Brambilla said.

Many regional presidents and mayors have said they do not want to host new centers. Luca Zaia, the head of the northern Veneto region and a senior member of the League party, which is traditionally anti-migration, questioned the efficiency of the government’s proposal. “CPRs do not solve the problem of arrivals,” he said. “We are talking about emptying the sea with a bucket.”

The leader of Italy’s opposition Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, suggested that asking asylum seekers to pay to avoid being held in detention was against international law, ANSA reported. Schlein referred to the policy as the “latest cruelty” of the government.

The Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Liberties previously described the detention centers as “black holes” where people are subject to human rights violations. It has also argued that they are expensive and inefficient.

According to interior ministry data, more than 133,000 migrants have reached Italy by boat so far this year, nearly twice as many as in the same period of 2022.

The migrants have come from countries including Guinea, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Italy does not have repatriation deals with many of the migrants’ countries of origin, meaning it cannot deport them. In 2022, just 3,916 foreign nationals were deported from Italy.

The government has responded to the recent increase in the number of migrants arriving on the southern island of Lampedusa with a range of measures to tighten asylum laws, such as scrapping “special protection” residency permits that were previously granted to migrants who did not qualify for asylum but who faced humanitarian risks in their home countries.