During the height of Europe’s migration “crisis,” Germany was one of the few EU countries to openly embrace assisting refugees, registering more than a million arrivals in less than two years. However, this stance spurred a public backlash, which led to the adoption of a host of restrictive measures, including policies intended to increase removals, limit family reunifications, and expand the range of facilities that can be used to detain migrants. […]
Covid-19
Paraguay Direccion General de Migracion Covid-19 Survey
Paraguay’s Immigration Service reports that although the country has not implemented a detention moratorium during the pandemic there have been no new detention orders because permits for foreigners have been temporarily extended. […]
Croatian Interior Ministry Covid-19 Letter to the Global Detention Project, 7 August 2020
Croatia Interior Ministry Covid-19 Letter to the Global Detention Project, 7 August 2020 […]
Immigration Detention in Jordan: Detained by Employers, Locked Inside Refugee Camps, Pushed Back into Conflict Zones
Jordan has long played an important role in hosting refugees from neighbouring Arab states and has the second-largest share of refugees per capita worldwide. Although the country has at times been praised for its reception practices, arrests, forced deportations—including into the Syrian conflict zone—and poor conditions of detention remain critical concerns. […]
Immigration Detention in Argentina: A Paradigm Shift?
Argentina, like its South American neighbours, has long de-emphasised detention and deportation in its immigration policies. However, in 2015 its posture changed dramatically after a conservative government took office, which pushed through several restrictive policy reforms and announced the opening of the country’s first specialised immigration detention centre. A new administration that took office in […]
The GDP Launches the “Covid-19 Global Immigration Detention Platform”
As the coronavirus pandemic changes the lives of societies around the world, countries are being forced to alter their detention and deportation decisions. The GDP has launched a new, dedicated Covid-19 global tracking platform to monitor governments’ treatment of immigration detainees during the crisis. […]
Immigration Detention in Belgium: Covid-19 Puts the Brakes on an Expanding Detention System
Belgium has adopted increasingly hardening immigration and asylum policies, including an expansion of its detention system. But the Covid-19 crisis has spurred the country to temporarily reduce its immigration detention capacity by half, to some 300 beds, while the Immigration Office has temporarily halted the registration of new asylum seekers. In 2017, the government back-peddled on an earlier commitment to stop detaining children when it opened new “family units” inside detention centres. […]
COVID-19 – Respecting the Rights of Migrants and Refugees
As the coronavirus pandemic changes the lives of societies around the world, so too must it spur consideration for how countries are choosing to treat people in their custody for immigration- or asylum-related reasons. This need is all the more pressing given how leaders in many countries have begun capitalising on the disease’s spread to fuel […]
