ROME – Italy has just carried out the first deportation linked to its new Albania-based migrant detention centre – but the individual ended up being deported from Italy, not Albania.
The case involved a Bangladeshi national who was sent from Italy to the Gjader repatration site in northern Albania, only to be later returned to Italy again and then flown to Bangladesh.
The entire operation took four separate trips and a week, and may have costed over €5,000, according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica. This is more than double the average cost of a standard deportation, recently updated by the Interior Ministry to €2,800.
But Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi branded the first Gjader’s repatriation as a key step in the crackdown on irregular migration.
The facility, entirely under Italian control, was repurposed into a repatriation detention centre at the end of March to sidestep the legal hurdles.
Before that, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s plan for the Italian-funded centres in Albania was to use them as hubs to fast-track processing and deportation procedures for adult male migrants from “safe countries” who had been rescued at sea.
Then, in mid-April, around 40 migrants from countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nigeria were sent from Brindisi to Albania, after being moved from other detention centres across Italy.
Some were sent back: two for health reasons, and one after applying for asylum.
According to Monday’s ruling by Rome’s Court of Appeal, anyone transferred to the centres who then seeks asylum cannot be lawfully detained in Albania and must be returned to Italy.
Still, Italian authorities have said more deportations from the site are expected in the coming days.
Last week, the European Commission adopted an EU-wide “safe countries of origin” list, allowing for faster and easier rejection of asylum claims.
The move could revive Meloni’s original vision for the Albania centres by clearing any remaining legal obstacles.
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