July 11-18, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo
This week, we review yet another detailed investigation documenting 1.000+ 'drift-backs' that have unlawfully expelled nearly 27.500 asylum seekers from EUropean waters since March 2020—then the news.
Welcome to Mixed Migration—hebdo! Here, in the time it takes to read one feature, you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, along with links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.
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Spotlight
There’s really not that much new to say here—pushbacks, the Aegean, the EU: Groundhog Day. Last week, Forensic Architecture and Forensis launched a new portal documenting, with millimetric precision, over a thousand drift-back operations carried out over the last 2+ years, unlawfully expelling nearly 27.500 asylum seekers from Greek waters to Turkey, in blatant violations of Greek, EU, and international law.
This on the heels of a unanimous ruling from the European Court of Human Rights finding Greek authorities responsible for a 2014 pushback that led to the deaths of 11 asylum seekers, and for the degrading treatment of 12 survivors. On the heels of that ruling, Greek authorities have tasked the National Transparency Authority with investigating the conduct of pushbacks again—just 3 months after completing an investigation on the conduct of pushbacks pushed by the European commission, its results falling far below reasonable expectations for a state body issuing an official report.
Brussels seems to be running out of patience with the pushbacks it has tacitly demanded of Greece over the last half-decade—actively participating in their conduct all while shielding Greek authorities from accountability. But so far, though it has thrown former Frontex director Fabrice Leggeri under the bus, it has shown neither introspection nor regret over Commission President von der Leyen’s condoning of border violence in March 2020, or over Vice-President Schinas’ obfuscation less than 2 months ago. Though Frontex has a new director, it’s far from clear if its modus operandi of the last few years will transition from facilitating and covering up pushbacks, to more law-abiding form of border enforcement, in the months and years to come. Likewise, it remains to be seen quite what will happen if and when Greek authorities join their EU counterparts on this particular road to Damascus.
Firing an official or two, or even a cabinet minister, would certainly occupy headlines and might even satisfy EU demands for a symbolic gesture to allay criticism of the grim human rights situation at EU external borders. But, seeing the incentive structures as they remain aligned, it would not likely lead to a shift in practice or in culture. The balance between security and legal imperatives at EU external borders remains decisively tilted security’s way—namely, toward border control, its moral cost be what it may. So long as this remains the case, the archives of documented pushbacks compiled not just by Forensic Architecture and Forensis, but also by Lighthouse Reports, the Border Violence Monitoring Network, Aegean Boat Report, and others, will only continue to grow.
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On to the news…
Asia
Afghanistan and its neighbors
Last Wednesday, physicians in Kabul signaled alarm as they observed a spike in diarrheal disease, with intakes growing to ~100 per day with the arrival of warm weather, and with the Ministry of Health reporting 15 recent fatalities due to cholera in Helmand province along. On the same day, German officials disclosed that out of ~23.300 local staff to Germany’s mission to Afghanistan, ~17.200 have been relocated to Germany, with new departures—from neighboring countries—numbering ~200 per week. | On Friday, the World Bank and UNDP signed an agreement to offer $20 million in funding for NGOs and CSOs conducting humanitarian and development projects in Afghanistan. On the same day, the Huffington Post highlighted that at least 27.000 Hazara civilians have been displaced due to recent fighting in Afghanistan’s central Balkhab province, with local officials estimating much higher displacement figures than the official count. | On Sunday, Iranian authorities repatriated 140 Pakistani nationals, having apprehended them attempting to reach Europe via Iran.
Conflict and displacement in Myanmar and India
Last Monday, the ICJ announced it would issue a response next week, on July 22, to Burmese objections to litigation filed by the Gambia accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya. | On Tuesday, the Thai Chamber of Commerce issued an assessment tallying that 3 to 4 million migrant workers are needed in labor-intensive sectors of its economy, including agriculture, construction, and food processing, to achieve its post-pandemic economic recovery. | On Thursday, Tatmadaw strikes in Myanmar’s central Sagaing province displaced ~10.000 civilians from 12 villages. On the same day, Indian authorities went public with the results of a year-long public investigation into human trafficking networks luring Rohingya girls from encampments in Bangladesh into India, detaining 6 traffickers and detailing an elaborate network of safe houses and document forgery facilitating this criminality. | On Sunday, local authorities tallied just over 30.000 Burmese refugee arrivals to India’s northeastern Mizoram State since this Februrary—including 14 lawmakers—living in 156 encampments across the state. | This Monday, India’s National Medical Commission announced it had formed a committee to draft a framework for a qualifications exam allowing Pakistani clinicians holding asylum in India to practice medicine, allowing then to work at their competence level and regularizing irregular medical practices, while filling skills gaps in India’s healthcare system.
Japan’s peculiar asylum system
Last Tuesday, the Japan Lawyers Network for Refugees disclosed that Japanese authorities were readying to issue asylum, for the first time, to a Turkish Kurd, who had been struggling to obtain asylum in Japan since 2014.
Sources: TOLOnews, the Huffington Post, Dawn, InfoMigrants, The Diplomat, Reuters, the Irrawaddy, EastMojo, PTI, Kyodo.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Civil conflict and displacement within and beyond Ethiopia
Last Wednesday, Ethiopian authorities signed a provisional agreement with UNOPS to begin rebuilding infrastructure in Tigray, using a $300 million grant from the World Bank. | On Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry announced the launch of an operation to repatriate 12.000 Ethiopians from half a dozen eastern and southern African countries, as well as from Yemen and Oman, with returns from Saudi Arabia having just exceeded 100.000 in the last few months. | On Friday, Addis Standard highlighted that ~24.000 Amhara civilians have been recently displaced from Oromia on the heels of mass attacks against Amhara communities, creating new acutely at-risk and at-need communities in central Ethiopia. | On Sunday, Refugees International signaled alarm at the recent forcible transfer of ~100 Eritrean refugees from Addis Ababa to refugee camps along the border of Amhara and Tigray, where they will be at immense risk. On the same day, Sudanese authorities reopened the Gallabat crossing on the border with Ethiopia, closed since an armed clash in late April led to the killing of 7 Sudanese troops and 1 civilian.
Conflict and displacement in the Sahel
Last Tuesday, HumAngle relayed the concerns of IDPs living in Gubio camp, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, who, on the heels of the camp’s designation as a site to be closed, are running dangerously low on food and water, and facing dire hygiene outcomes as sanitation infrastructure falls into disrepair. | On Friday, MSF announced it would close 2 bases it maintains in Cameroon’s Southwest provinces by August 1, worn down by hostility from national authorities, extending to the detention of 4 MSF field responders last January, 2 of whom remain in detention facing trial.
Sources: the EastAfrican, Addis Standard, Refugees International, HumAngle.
Middle East and North Africa
Internal displacement in Syria and Yemen
Last Tuesday, the UN Security Council approved a resolution allowing humanitarian aid to continue entering Idlib province, home to 4.1 million internally displaced Syrians, for the coming 6 months. | On Thursday, the Action Group for the Palestinians of Syria revealed that, in 2021, just under 1.800 Palestinians had been held in detention in Syria. | On Friday, U.S. authorities admonished their Turkish counterparts to desist from an intended assault on Kurdish militia in northeast Syria, warning that the humanitarian impact of a strike, coupled with the potential for breakouts from detention camps containing former ISIS fighters, could severely destabilize the region.
Asylum seeker (im)mobility in the MENA region
Last Wednesday, Morocco’s National Human Rights Council of Morrocco, currently probing last month’s mass tragedy at the Melilla border fence, issued a finding that most of the deceased had succumbed to mechanical asphyxiation, becoming unable to breathe as a result of the physical pressure exerted on their bodies by the collective push away from police forces and into the barrier. | On Thursday, IOM disclosed that, on July 6, it had rescued 44 asylum seekers who had become stranded in the northern Nigerien desert, after the truck in which they had been trying to reach Libya had broken down. | On Saturday, the EU announced a renewed partnership with Niger to deter asylum seeker departures toward Libya and disrupt human smuggling across the Sahara.
Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, heavy rains began lashing Yemen’s contested Marib province, affecting over 13.500 displaced families living in 197 IDP camps. | On Sunday, Ansar Allah threatened to refuse to renew the nearly 4-month ceasefire that has drastically reduced violence across Yemen’s frontlines, reacting to U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
Sources: AFP, Middle East Monitor, al-Monitor, al Jazeera, InfoMigrants, Libya Observer, the New Arab, Bloomberg.
Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West
Ruta Canaria
Last Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 213 asylum seekers, and tallied 2 missing persons, from 4 rescues in waters off of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. | On Tuesday, Moroccan authorities announced they had intercepted and turned back 257 asylum seekers trying to reach the Canary Islands over the 3 days prior. | On Thursday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 55 asylum seekers from a distressed vessel in waters off of Lanzarote. | On Friday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 78 asylum seekers, and retrieved 2 lifeless bodies, from 2 distressed vessels in waters off of Lanzarote. On the same day, 20 asylum seekers reached autonomously the shores of Lanzarote. | On Saturday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 52 asylum seekers from a vessel that has lost power and adrift in waters off of Lanzarote.
Mediterranean and Aegean Seas
Last Monday, the GeoBarents (MSF) was assigned a safe port of arrival in Taranto, allowing it to disembark the 314 asylum seekers rescued from the Central Mediterranean over the week prior. | On Tuesday, IOM disclosed that it had tallied the return of 299 asylum seekers, between July 3 and 9 of this year, from the Central Mediterranean to Libyan shores. | On Friday, Aegean Boat Report relayed the testimony of 32 asylum seekers who made landfall in Kos late last June, where they were apprehended by local police, detained informally and abused—physically and psychologically—before being turned back to see and left adrift in unnavigable rafts. | On Sunday, Turkish officials claimed to have recorded drone footage capturing 2 pushbacks from Greek into Turkish waters near Samos.
The English Channel
Last Monday, 442 asylum seekers were rescued from 15 vessels in British waters and brought to UK soil. | On Friday, the BBC tallied 815 refugee arrivals through the week prior.
U.S. maritime borders
Last Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted 18 asylum seekers trying to reach U.S. soil by sea, crossing from Tijuana to San Diego—the 3rd such crossing attempt in as many days, with 52 asylum seekers detained in total. | On Tuesday, 25 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to Key Biscayne in Florida, 2 days after another 25 Cuban asylum seekers had arrived to Marquesias Key and Grassy Key. | On Wednesday, U.S. Coast Guard officers repatriated 77 Cuban asylum seekers across the Gulf of Mexico, intercepted mid-sea in 8 separate operations over the week prior. On the same day, U.S. Coast Guard officers repatriated 14 Dominican asylum seekers intercepted in Puerto Rican waters. | On Thursday, 6 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to mainland Florida on a makeshift vessel, where they were promptly apprehended by U.S. authorities. | On Sunday, U.S. authorities announced they had apprehended 41 Cuban asylum seekers in the Florida Keys over the weekend. This Monday, the parliamentary home affairs committee issued a report blasting the Home Office for pursuing performative but ineffective migration management policies while the asylum backlog exceeds 125.000 claims, with asylum case workers battling overwork and antiquated software to try to sustain an unsustainable system.
Sources: EFE, InfoMigrants, ABR, Middle East Monitor, BBC, Border Report, the Miami Herald, EFE, Palm Beach Post.
Europe
EU migration policymaking
Last Tuesday, Frontex announced the termination of its border surveillance operation in Lithuania, denying the decision resulted from the week prior’s ECJ ruling faulting Lithuania for violating the rights of asylum seekers, while claiming Frontex’s Fundamental Rights Office had flagged ill-behavior in months prior; as Frontex suggested it may switch its policy from withdrawing from countries found to severely violate the rights of asylum seekers to increasing its presence to such countries in order to ensure better compliance. On Wednesday, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson announced that, at an EU Council summit on Monday, 13 member states committed to receiving ~80.000 asylum seekers from frontline states, on the basis of voluntary relocation, with other states committing financial support. | On Friday, Forensic Architecture released the findings of a 2-year, open-source intelligence investigation documenting over 1.000 drift-backs affecting nearly 27.500 asylum seekers unlawfully expelled from EU waters into Turkish waters since March 2020.
Dystopia at the Home Office
Last Monday, the Divisional Court hearing a challenge against the UK-Rwanda asylum seeker deportation agreement adjourned litigation until September, giving appelants time to prepare their legal challenges and a degree of recourse to challenge future deportation flights scheduled before litigation is completed. | On Tuesday, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey revealed the Royal Navy’s methodology in considering whether and how to implement Home Office guidance demanding it turn back asylum seeker vessels mid-sea, explaining its assessment that any such turnbacks would be both fatally dangerous and unlawful. | On Friday, chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor denounced reception conditions for asylum seekers brought ashore after mid-sea interception, describing families waiting overnight for transfer to proper facilities, still wet and suffering burns inflicted by their crossing, detailing grievous safeguarding shortcomings. | On Sunday, human rights advocates chastised the Home Office for its boldly untrue descriptions of the states of mind of asylum seekers slated for deportation to Rwanda. On the same day, UNHCR again admonished the Home Office for misrepresenting its position with regard to the UK-Rwanda deportation deal, which UNHCR continues to forcefully oppose (find the full report here).
Displacement within and beyond Ukraine
On Wednesday, UNHCR issued a report tallying that 65% of Ukrainian refugees intend to remain in their host countries until their region of origin stabilizes, and that 9% intended to move onward to a further host country in the next month (see the full report here). | On Friday, German authorities announced they had set aside €2.4 billion this year to provide integration support to the ~800.000 Ukrainian refugees who have arrived and settled in Germany since the late February Russian invasion. | On Saturday, the Guardian highlighted the economic difficulties driving displaced Ukrainians back to communities of origin that are not safe for return, as state- and solidarity-driven support for IDPs fall short of immense manifest needs. | On Sunday, Dutch authorities revealed that ~24.000 Ukrainian refugees have joined the domestic labor force since April, roughly half of them taking up jobs in labor-scarce fields.
European migration (mis)management
Last Thursday, authorities in Serbia detained 85 asylum seekers in the northern city of Subotica, claiming to have found a substantial cache of weapons belonging to smugglers in the sweep. On the same day, Cyprus’ Attorney General filed charges against 4 individuals, including a former President of the Parliament, for alleged corruption in their administration of the Cypriot ‘golden passport’ scheme allowing investors to obtain regular status and intra-EU mobility via Cyprus. | On Friday, Slovenian authorities began removing razor-wire fence installed in 2015 along the border with Croatia, expecting it to take 5 months to remove all 200 kilometers of fencing. On the same day, several dozen asylum seekers staged a peaceful protest outside of the Netherlands’ main reception center of Ter Apel, protesting weeks-long delays in obtaining proper accommodation or being allowed to lodge an asylum claim.
Sources: EUobserver, ANSA, Forensic Architecture, Sky News, Morning Star, BBC, the Guardian, al Jazeera, Reuters, ANP, AP, Middle East Eye.
The Americas
U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, the Biden Administration extended temporary protected status through March 10, 2024, for Venezuelan nationals in the U.S. as of March 8, 2021, through March 10, 2024. On the same day, Immigration Impact highlighted a July 1 rule change allowing TPS beneficiaries to obtain travel documents allowing them to validate their entry into the U.S., and thus eventually become eligible for green cards. Also on Monday, Canadian authorities announced a proposal to streamline the pathway from temporary to permanent residence for immigrants to Canada, building on an accelerated pathway introduced in 2019 as border closures reduced immigration flows, increasing reliance on immigrants already in Canada and pressure to offer them permanent status. | On Wednesday, The Intercept revealed systematic sexual abuse by clinical staff against detained women at the Stewart migrant detention center in Georgia, covered up by a complaints processing system designed to protect abusive staff rather than abused asylum seekers. On the same day, amid COVID-19 restrictions and the accumulation of prior arrivals, service providers in Washington, DC began signaling they were running low on capacity to shelter asylum seekers being bused from Texas and Arizona to the district by local governors keen to stir divisive politicking with unilateral relocations. | On Friday, U.S. authorities tallied nearly 207.500 encounters with asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border, 26% of whom were known to be repeating an attempted crossing after having been summarily expelled under Title 42.
Irregular migration in Latin America
Last Monday, U.S. border forces intercepted 313 asylum seekers, including 79 unaccompanied minors, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley. | On Thursday, a novel caravan composed of 200 Venezuelan asylum seekers departed from Tapachula try to reach Huixtla and petition for 30-day residence permits allowing them to transit across Mexico and attempt to enter U.S. soil. On the same day, advisors to current Colombian President Iván Duque criticized proposals by incoming President-elect Gustavo Petro to improve relations with Venezuela and encourage the voluntary return of displaced Venezuelans currently in Colombia, admonishing that state resources should be directed at facilitating integration rather than return. | On Friday, Mexican authorities intercepted 251 asylum seekers transiting through the central state of Puebla in 2 northbound buses. On the same day, Guatemalan authorities intercepted 70 asylum seekers transiting irregularly through Guatemalan soil. Also on Friday, Colombian and Panamanian authorities disclosed they intend to hold discussions this August on implementing a safe route bypassing the Darién Gap, to spare asylum seekers the immense risks they face along its hostile terrain. | On Saturday, Guatemalan authorities revealed that just under 56.350 nationals have been repatriated from the U.S. or Mexico thus far this year.
Sources: al Jazeera, Immigration Impact, CBC, The Intercept, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Border Report, EFE, infobae, AGN, En Frontera, la Jornada.
Oceania
Australian migration policymaking
Last Thursday, Australian authorities abruptly terminated a facility that had issued 8.500 humanitarian visas to displaced Ukrainians, leading to 4.100 departures to Australia. | On Friday, Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese announced his intention to expand the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility program, which currently offers visas for Pacific Islanders to join Australia’s agricultural and meatpacking sectors, for it to also include the service sector, including elder care, tourism, and hospitality.
Sources: the Conversation, the Epoch Times.
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