BRUSSELS — The European Union has moved forward with a vast overhaul of its migration policy, aiming to ramp up deportations and ink controversial deals to build detention centers abroad, in what rights groups compare to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies.
The provisional agreement was reached Monday evening between the EU’s three main institutions — the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament — during a so-called “trilogue” session, according to an announcement from Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc.
“The new regulation will speed up the return process and increase returns of persons who have no legal right to stay in the EU,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister for Cyprus.
Member nations will soon be able to set up bilateral deals with countries outside the bloc to build deportation centers. At least five EU nations — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece — are already in talks with third countries, mostly in Africa, to host “return hubs” on the model of Italy’s detention deal with Albania.
Critics compared the regulation to the immigration strategy of the Trump administration, which struck a series of secretive agreements with nations around the world to deport thousands of people to countries that are not their own. The United Kingdom also planned to deport migrants to Rwanda, a plan that became bogged down in legal challenges and was dropped when a new government took power.
“The Regulation is going to create a draconian detention and deportation machine,” said Silvia Carter, spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants. “Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE’s brutal immigration enforcement. Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it.”
Activist groups warned the legislation would cut deep into the protections granted by the EU’s fundamental charter on human rights and expose people to risks outside the bloc.
“This deal will give governments much broader powers to detain and deport people,” said Marta Welander, a spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee. “It looks set to normalize immigration raids, expand the use of detention in prison-like facilities outside EU territory that are essentially legal black holes, and increase the risk of people being deported to countries where they could face persecution, torture or worse.”
The deal now heads to EU lawmakers and heads of state, where approval is expected to be swift.
Fueled by people fleeing conflict and poverty across Africa and the Middle East, the 2015 refugee crisis, in which about 1 million people arrived to seek asylum, and successive years of irregular migration to Europe have driven a rightward shift in the bloc’s politics. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures will prevent a repeat of that crisis.
Right-wing parties took power in some EU countries in 2024, and center-right political groups allied with the far-right to overcome opposition from centrist and left-wing parties, said Mélissa Camara, a French lawmaker and member of the Greens.
“The legalization of return hubs outside the European Union, the green light for the detention of minors, home visits inspired by ICE practices: the legal arsenal serving a xenophobic ideology is now complete,” Camara said, calling the deal “a historic setback” for human rights in the bloc.