A German police officer takes a man to a deportation flight to Pakistan, February 25, 2025, Hesse, Germany.
The European Union is forging ahead on its quest to increase deportations regardless of the consequences for people’s rights. On June 17, the European Parliament approved a Return Regulation that portends increased detention, forced removals, and externalization. Two days later, 19 EU states signed an open letter encouraging “full use of the new possibilities” of “return hubs.”
The idea is to send people, including families with children, to somewhere outside the EU if they cannot be deported directly to their country of origin. It is unclear whether people will be detained wherever they go and for how long, whether they will be deported onward to their country of origin despite threats to their rights, or if they will have opportunities to rebuild their lives in a country to which they have no connection. Potential access to justice and redress people would have for rights violations is anyone’s guess.
Five countries—Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, and The Netherlands—have made no secret of their interest in setting up what could be a joint return hub. Destinations reportedly under consideration include countries with terrible human rights records, including Rwanda, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritania, and Kazakhstan. The EU has failed to address grave human rights concerns in its engagement with their governments. How any of them would meet the Return Regulation’s requirement to respect international human rights standards is difficult to see.
Human Rights Watch has consistently found that deportations to third countries exposes people to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, destitution, and chain refoulement—that is return to places of danger. United States deportations of third-country nationals to Mexico, El
