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asylum
EU Ministers Ripped for 'Legitimizing Offshore Prisons, Racial Profiling, and Child Detention'
"Ministers' position on the return regulation reveals the EU's dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost," said an Amnesty International campaigner.
Dec 08, 2025
Advocacy organizations on Monday renewed sharp criticism of European Union policymakers' plans for new rules targeting undocumented immigrants after the Council of the EU finalized its "return regulation" proposal at a meeting in Brussels.
Building on the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum—set to take effect next June despite being denounced as a "bow to right-wing extremists and fascists"—the European Commission this past March proposed common rules for expelling migrants. The council's deal on Monday established its position on the proposal for negotiations with the European Parliament on the final text.
Despite serious pressure from civil society, including joint statements in September and last week, the Council of the EU—made up of national ministers from the bloc's 27 member states—agreed to support "strict obligations on returnees," such as limiting certain benefits, refusing or withdrawing work permits, and imposing criminal sanctions, including imprisonment.
The council also backed the creation of "return hubs" outside of the European Union, putting in place "special measures for people who pose a security risk," mutual recognition of bloc members' deportation decisions, and a form that will be filled out and added to the EU's information-sharing system for security and border management.
The EU Council’s recent Returns Regulation deal goes against key demands from about 70 civil society organisations.🔊The main demand: A rights-based approach focused on voluntary, dignified return, strict detention limits, and full compliance with EU and international law.
— ECRE (@theecre.bsky.social) December 8, 2025 at 8:44 AM
"EU ministers' position on the return regulation reveals the EU's dogged and misguided insistence on ramping up deportations, raids, surveillance, and detention at any cost," declared Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty International's EU advocate on migration and asylum, in a statement. "These punitive measures amount to an unprecedented stripping of rights based on migration status and will leave more people in precarious situations and legal limbo."
"In addition, EU member states continue to push for cruel and unworkable 'return hubs,' or offshore deportation centers outside of the EU—forcibly transferring people to countries where they have no connection and may be detained for long periods, violating protections in international law," she continued. "This approach mirrors the harrowing, dehumanizing, and unlawful mass arrests, detention, and deportations in the US, which are tearing families apart and devastating communities."
US President Donald Trump returned to office in January, having campaigned on a promise of mass deportations despite facing global condemnation for his first-term immigration policies, particularly family separation. His second term has featured masked federal agents prowling the streets; engaging violently with undocumented immigrants, US citizens of color, and protesters, including Democratic politicians; and detaining migrants—most of whom lack criminal convictions—in inhumane conditions.
The Trump administration aims to boost a far-right movement already on the rise in Europe, claiming in a "national security strategy" document released last Thursday that the continent faces the "stark prospect of civilizational erasure" due to mass migration and the United States must take steps to help "correct its current trajectory."
As Agence France-Presse reported:
A decline in irregular entries to Europe—down by around 20% so far in 2025 compared to last year—has not eased the pressure to act on the hot-button issue.
"We have to speed up," said EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner, "to give the people the feeling that we have control over what is happening."
...Under the impetus of Denmark, which holds the EU's rotating presidency and has long advocated for stricter migration rules, member states are moving forward at a rapid pace.
On Monday, as Sundberg Diez put it, the Council of the EU took "an already deeply flawed and restrictive commission proposal and opted to introduce new punitive measures, dismantling safeguards and weakening rights further, rather than advancing policies that promote dignity, safety, and health for all."
"They will inflict deep harm on migrants and the communities that welcome them," the campaigner added. "Amnesty International urges the European Parliament, which is yet to adopt its final position on the proposal, to reverse this approach and place human rights firmly at the center of upcoming negotiations."
The Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM)—which, like Amnesty, was among over 250 groups that signed the September statement—also urged the European Parliament to reject the council's policies, taking aim at plans for home raids; expansion of detention, including of children; deportation hubs outside the EU; 20-year entry bans; and more.
"This so-called 'return regulation' ushers in a deportation regime that entrenches punishment, violence, and discrimination," said PICUM advocacy officer Silvia Carta. "Instead of investing in safety, protection, and inclusion, the EU is choosing policies that will push more people into danger and legal limbo. The council's position goes against basic humanity and EU values. Now it is up to the European Parliament to reject this approach. Migration governance must be rooted in dignity and rights—not fear, racism, or exclusion."
Sarah Chander, director at the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, was similarly critical, arguing that with the proposal, "the EU is legitimizing offshore prisons, racial profiling, and child detention in ways we have never seen. Instead of finding ways to ensure safety and protection for everybody, the EU is pushing a punishment regime for migrants, which will help no one."
Alkistis Agrafioti Chatzigianni, an advocacy officer and lawyer at the Greek Council for Refugees, noted that "Greece has become one of the EU's starkest experiments in detaining asylum applicants—marked by prison-like conditions, a lack of effective monitoring mechanisms, and repeated findings of rights violations."
The return regulation, the expert warned, "threatens to replicate and entrench this model across Europe. Instead of learning from the profound failures of detention-based approaches, the EU is choosing to scale them up, turning border zones into sites of coercion and trauma for people seeking protection. This is a dangerous step backwards. A humane migration system must be built on dignity, transparency, and the right to seek safety."
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'Monday Afternoon Massacre': Trump Fires 8 Immigration Judges in NYC
"The goal is to transform an imperfect system which aimed for fairness into a rubber stamp mill, leaving only the 'deportation judges' they want," said one policy expert.
Dec 02, 2025
As the Trump administration intensifies a push to hire what officials call "deportation judges," eight judges were fired Monday from the New York City immigration court that's become the epicenter for anti-immigrant enforcement in the city.
The National Association of Immigration Judges, the union that represents judges who handle immigration cases, confirmed to the New York Times that the eight officials had been dismissed in what one recently fired judge described as a "Monday afternoon massacre."
"The court has been basically eviscerated,” said former Judge Olivia Cassin, who presided over another immigration court in New York City until being fired in November, told the Times.
The judges who were dismissed Monday had worked at the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, where the city's US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices are also located.
The building has been the scene of harrowing ICE arrests in recent months, with an agent throwing an asylum-seeker to the ground in September as she pleaded with him not to detain her husband, and masked officers arresting NYC Comptroller Brad Lander in June when he tried to offer assistance to an immigrant.
The immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza employs 34 judges. Nearly 100 immigration judges have now been fired across the US this year.
Among those dismissed on Monday was Judge Amiena A. Khan, who served as the assistant chief immigration judge and supervised other jurists.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that from 2019-24, Khan ruled on 620 asylum cases and granted asylum to 544 applicants. Cassin decided on 669 asylum cases from 2020-25 and granted asylum to 582 people. Immigration judges across the country denied asylum to refugees more frequently than Khan and Cassin over those same periods, according to TRAC.
After Monday's dismissals were announced, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posited that "the Trump administration is systematically firing immigration judges across the country for no reason other their above-average grant rates."
Last week, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on social media a call for legal professionals to join the Justice Department as "a deportation judge to defend your community."
"End the invasion," urged DHS.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the Trump administration appears to want "to poison the applicant pool."
"The job of an immigration judge isn’t to 'end the invasion,'" said Bier. "It is to evaluate whether someone is eligible for relief from deportation under civil immigration law."
Immigration attorney Allen Orr said Tuesday that if an administration's goal is to "improve vetting, you don't fire eight immigration judges in NYC—the epicenter of the national backlog."
Such mass firings are done, he said, "to stall the system, punish immigrants, and create crises. Dismantling is deliberate, not security."
On Monday, former Chicago immigration Judge Carla Espinoza described to Al Jazeera how she was abruptly fired from her courtroom position in July.
The judges who have been fired this year include "attorneys who previously represented immigrants or provided pro bono help to immigrants before they became a judge," she said.
In this episode of #UNMUTE, former US immigration judge Carla Espinoza discusses the wave of firings of judges under the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/HhT1jhxhzt
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) December 1, 2025
"For the first time," said Espinoza, "we're seeing a clear indication that there's an expectation that we do things a certain way, that we rule on motions in cases before us a certain way, that we rush through cases, which is something we've never heard before."
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Judge Rejects Kilmar Abrego Garcia's Bid to Reopen Asylum Claim
The judge ruled Abrego Garcia had presented "insufficient evidence" to show that the Trump administration planned his "imminent removal to Uganda."
Oct 02, 2025
Kilmar Ábrego García, the man whom the Trump administration wrongly deported to El Salvador earlier this year, has been denied a bid to reopen his asylum case.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Immigration Judge Philip P. Taylor rejected Ábrego García's asylum request, as he found "insufficient evidence" to show that the Trump administration planned his "imminent removal to Uganda," even though the US Department of Homeland Security wrote in a social media post in late August that he would be processed for removal to that nation.
In explaining his ruling, Taylor noted that the government had not yet filed any paperwork to send Ábrego García to Uganda, and a government attorney said that deporting him to Uganda was merely a possibility not a foregone conclusion.
Ábrego García now has 30 days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
The Trump administration this past June complied with a Supreme Court order to facilitate Ábrego García's return to United States after it acknowledged months earlier that he had been improperly deported to El Salvador, where a US immigration judge had ruled years earlier he faced direct danger from gang threats against him and his family.
While imprisoned in El Salvador’s infamous Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), Ábrego García's attorneys allege he was subjected to physical and psychological abuse "including but not limited to severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture."
Upon his return, the US Department of Justice promptly hit him with human smuggling charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi have also accused Ábrego García of being a member of the gang MS-13, although they have produced no evidence to back up that assertion.
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