Italian Senate passes controversial measure to ship migrants to Albania

A controversial plan agreed upon between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart in November to send boat migrants to Italian-run centers on Albanian soil has passed the Italian Senate.

The plan passed on a vote of 93 to 61. It had previously passed the lower house of parliament.

The program has drawn scorn from Italy’s opposition, which refers to it as Italy’s Guantanamo Bay, and by human rights groups, because Albania is not part of the European Union (EU) and therefore does not have to follow EU guidelines on detention, treatment and deportation of people seeking asylum.

It is unlawful under EU law to immediately deport a migrant or refugee until their application for asylum is processed. Albania is not obliged to follow EU rules.

The centers will be built with Italian funds and staffed with Italian civil servants to process up to 3,000 asylum applicants a month.

The migrants and potential refugees would be those rescued by Italian military assets including the Coast Guard and Navy ships, and not those rescued by NGO’s, the accord language states. Women and children would also not be sent to Albania.

In 2023, more than 157,000 people reached Italy by boat, according to Italian interior ministry data.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party campaigned on a strong anti-immigration platform in 2022, but she has been criticized for not doing enough to stop boats.

Amnesty International’s chief migration and asylum researcher Matteo De Bellis said in a statement Thursday that individuals disembarked in Albania and brought to the centers, including refugees and people seeking asylum, “would be automatically detained and unable to leave” the centers for up to 18 months.

“Under international law, automatic detention is inherently arbitrary and therefore unlawful,” he warned, adding that transport to Albania would mean people rescued from often harrowing situations at sea would have to stay on boats for days longer than needed.

“This dangerous distortion of search and rescue rules might put lives at risk, and would affect people already in a vulnerable condition given the circumstances of their journeys, marking a shameful chapter for Italy,” he added.

The plan mirrors a similar plan that has hit roadblocks in the United Kingdom, which aims to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.