Event: Jesuit Refugee Service USA – “The Expanding Global Detention System as a Pillar of Externalized Enforcement: How We Reached this Point, a Normative Human Rights Framework, and Pushing Back Against Extremist Policies”
Moderator: Donald Kerwin (JRS/USA Senior Ignatian Fellow)
Panellists: Michael Flynn (Global Detention Project Executive Director); Dr Izabella Majcher (Consultant); Dr Angelo Pittaluga (JRS Head of Advocacy);
“The fact is that the concerns we have today were equally relevant in the 1980s when the US began its then unprecedented efforts to interdict tens of thousands of Haitians fleeing the Duvalier regime and prevent them from applying for asylum on US soil but by holding asylum hearings on Coastguard boats in the Caribbean.” – Michael Flynn
On 16 September, the GDP participated in a Jesuit Refugee Service USA webinar examining the global expansion of immigration detention, the human rights risks of externalisation, and opportunities for advocacy and reform. The GDP’s Executive Director Michael Flynn joined Dr Izabella Majcher, Dr Angelo Pittaluga (JRS Head of Advocacy), and Donald Kerwin (JRS/USA Senior Ignatian Fellow) to explore how states are increasingly relying upon immigration detention to prevent migration, and to shift responsibility for asylum and migration management.
Drawing on years of research, Flynn highlighted that while efforts to externalise migration and asylum governance have accelerated dramatically in recent years, the practice itself is not new. Tracing its roots to US efforts in the Caribbean in the 1980s and 1990s, including the interception and offshore processing of Haitians and the establishment of immigration detention operations in Guantanamo, he reflected on Australia’s “Pacific Solution” and other similar approaches increasingly pursued by European states, before discussing the Trump administration’s third-country deportation schemes.
Further, he discussed the structural features of immigration detention that make it so prone to abuse and expansion–specifically, its administrative nature, meaning that it can operate with fewer procedural safeguards and less public scrutiny than criminal imprisonment. “For these reasons,” Flynn noted, “it is perhaps unsurprising that countries seek to export this kind of legally flexible system to nearby countries where the rule of law is often very weak, thereby maximising the benefits of this lawless procedure and diverting migration pressures from their own borders.”
“Asymmetric” Use of UN Treaty Body Processes
On a more positive note, Flynn also discussed the possibility of challenging externalisation schemes through UN human rights treaty bodies, and the value of linking such efforts with domestic strategic litigation. Highlighting recent GDP advocacy reports, he pointed in particular to the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers, noting that many countries facing pressure to participate in externalised migration enforcement schemes are parties to the Convention.
“Nearly all the human rights treaties have provisions that can be used to contest arbitrary immigration detention and the Trump administration’s third country deportations. Thus, at the GDP, we’re focusing enormous amounts of energy on what we term the “asymmetric” use of UN treaty body processes, which entails challenging US deportation schemes through the review procedures of targeted countries.”
