New joint study by European refugee and migrant rights’ networks ECRE and PICUM finds that EU funds for border management are being used to build harmful infrastructure to control external borders, leading to human rights violations. Crucial information on the assessment of such programmes and how the Commission addressed risks of rights violations was only accessible for this research through freedom of information requests.

The study focuses on the Border Management and Visa Instrument (BMVI), which boasts a 6.2 billion euros budget for 2021 – 2027 to fund equipment, personnel capacity, infrastructures, and technology to be used at the EU’s external borders. Overall, member states have so far received 4 billion euros, an increase of 45% compared to the resources received under the Internal Security Fund – Borders & Visa for 2014 – 2020.

Despite the European Commission ruling out the possibility to use these funds to build fences and walls, we find that the BMVI can already support measures that may disproportionately impact the rights of migrants and refugees. For example, some countries are using BMVI funding for border surveillance technology to either complement or replace physical surveillance.

Key examples:

• Estonia will spend 2 million euros on mobile remote sensing systems to increase border surveillance in areas “where it is not economically feasible to build a permanent infrastructure”.
• Poland aims to “reduce the physical surveillance of the border” by investing in light-detecting systems on watch towers, alarm systems, portable thermal and night vision devices, and motion-activated security cameras at the borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
• Croatia, Lithuania, Poland and Spain have acquired or are planning to acquire sniffer dogs to help border guards in patrolling borders and chasing and apprehending people who have crossed the border. In Croatia, dogs have already been used to threaten and bite migrants to push them back to the border.
• Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovakia will invest in new vehicles equipped with integrated thermal imaging cameras, satellite communication, and x-ray identification systems, with off-road capabilities. In Lithuania, EU resources will allow the purchase of a stationary search detector for persons hidden in vehicles.
• Croatia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Spain are planning to purchase vehicles for transporting migrants apprehended at the borders to police outposts and facilitate their expulsion to neighbouring countries. This practice constitutes “internal pushbacks” to other member states in informal procedures which have been found illegal by courts in Italy, Slovenia and Austria.
• Hungary’s strategy includes integrating artificial intelligence into vehicles for ground and air reconnaissance operations, potentially involving the employment of drones and other unpiloted vehicles. Greece and Estonia will also use drones and other unpiloted aircraft to expand their aerial surveillance capacity.
• Despite continuously documented challenging conditions of reception centres, Greece is using BMVI resources to run the hotspots on the islands and Cyprus is using BMVI funding to operate the first reception centre in Pournara (just outside Nicosia). Greece is also the country receiving the largest proportion of BMVI resources in absolute terms, with more than 1 billion euros, despite multiple European Court of Human Rights condemnations and continuous reports of persisting degrading conditions, prison-like conditions and restriction of movements in the state-managed centres. Some of these concerns were confirmed by the European Commission’s decision to launch an infringement procedure against the reception conditions in the hotspots in January 2023.
• The BMVI can also finance measures targeting support for people with vulnerabilities and international applicants. This may include procedures for the identification of vulnerable persons and unaccompanied children, information provision to and referral of people in need of international protection and victims of human trafficking, as well as the development of integrated child protection systems. However, the research found that 0.04% of the national programmes (around 1.3 million euros) is devoted to assistance and protection priorities (Croatia and Finland).

Monitoring and evaluation

Member states monitor the implementation of the BMVI programme through dedicated national monitoring committees, which should include experts in fundamental rights like civil society organisations, national human rights institutions, and potentially the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. But our research finds that civil society organisations are often underrepresented in monitoring committees and are not given the means to contribute meaningfully.

The Commission plays a key role in assessing the programmes’ compliance with fundamental rights. However, only thanks to requests for access to documents were we able to see that the Commission had questioned several national programmes during the programming phase, including on lack of access to asylum procedures in Greece, reception and detention conditions in Cyprus and Greece, allegations of pushbacks and discrimination issues in Poland, and deficiencies in judicial independence in Hungary.

What remains unclear is how the Commission came to eventually approve all programmes following murky exchanges with the member states in question. The European Parliament criticised this lack of transparency in the assessment process and initiated a lawsuit against the Commission concerning its decision to disburse over 10 billion euros of EU funds to Hungary, including BMVI funding.

Chiara Catelli, Policy Officer at ECRE and PICUM, said: “The European Commission’s refusal to allow financing of walls and fences is a fig leaf to cover other harmful measures that border funds can already support in member states. Our research finds that BMVI funding is used for an increasingly complex and digitalised system of border surveillance, forming an interconnected web of controls which harms people who come to the EU’s borders.”

“The EU and its member states must ensure that they respect the fundamental rights of people at the borders, including their protection from refoulement, inhuman or degrading treatment and right to life, as well as their often neglected right to access legal support and legal remedy.”

As the EU Council decided on 13 June to prolong temporary protection for people displaced by the war in Ukraine until March 2026, over 130 civil society organisations call on the EU to go beyond temporary renewals and adopt a common, future-proof approach that would lead to long-term residence and that would prevent millions of people in the EU from becoming undocumented.

Temporary protection (as foreseen in the EU Temporary Protection Directive) allows millions of displaced people to reside, work, study and access health care and social protection in the EU. But one-year renewals (which are dependent on decisions taken by the EU Council), leave people in uncertainty about future prospects.

By focusing specifically on one-year renewals of temporary protection, little attention is paid to future scenarios where temporary protection might end, for instance if there is no longer a majority of member states supporting such renewals.

The Temporary Protection Directive foresees that once its protection regime ends, people are channelled into national asylum or migration procedures. But this comes with risks for both displaced people and national administrations. National administrations would risk being overwhelmed by a sudden surge in requests for permits on other grounds, including asylum. Beneficiaries of temporary protection would risk spending months in uncertainty, with less rights than those granted by temporary protection. For instance, a person seeking asylum is often not able to work in the first six months as they wait for the result of their asylum claim.

Because requirements for asylum, work and other residence permits are more stringent than those for temporary protection, and because of lengthy procedures and understaffed administrations, many would risk becoming undocumented.

The signatories urge the EU to propose timely, coordinated, collective and future-proof options for the transition out of temporary protection. This future-proof solution must grant the same level of rights as temporary protection but should last longer and give access to long-term residence permits.

Quotes

Laetitia Van der Vennet, Senior Advocacy Officer, Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, said: “Failing to think about scenarios once temporary protection officially ends means that millions of people might fall through the cracks of bureaucracy and become undocumented. We need the EU to adopt a common permit that grants at least the same rights as temporary protection, lasts for at least two years and gives people access to longer-term residence in the EU”.

Katharine Woolrych, Advocacy Specialist, HIAS Europe, said: “A one-year extension of the TPD is a welcome move to ensure displaced people have continued access to status and rights. In parallel however we urgently need EU leadership to avoid an uncoordinated transition out of temporary protection. Perpetual renewals of “temporary” protection simply kick the can down the road.”

Ganna Dudinska, Senior Policy Advisor, International Rescue Committee, said: “While we welcome the decision to extend the temporary protection regime for one year to offer some predictability to displaced people, it does not provide a longer-term solution. The policymakers at the EU and national level should use this momentum to develop and offer displaced persons clear pathways to durability taking into consideration the specific needs of the most vulnerable individuals.”

As EU election results come in, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), and others have warned politicians against conceding ground to an extreme right bloc seeking to further erode human rights and the rule of law.

In a linked briefing, PICUM has highlighted how right and far-right parties have pledged to increase human rights violations across Europe, with migrants and racialised people bearing the brunt. This includes: 

• Extending a foreign policy that funds regimes outside Europe in return for violent border control on the EU’s behalf. This threatens migrant and refugee lives, whilst risking putting Europe at the mercy of violent authoritarians and eroding its moral leadership on the rule of law. 
• Increasing both EU and member state overreach in mass surveillance and policing; including through tripling the size of EU border agency Frontex, whose disgraced former director Fabrice Leggeri  is now an MEP for France’s far-right National Rally. 
• Increasing deals with countries outside the EU to process claims for protection in breach of international law.

Most Europeans did not support the far-right. But further concessions to the far-right, as signalled by Austria’s Chancellor, risks further electoral costs to mainstream parties. Tougher migration legislation (like that adopted in France and Germany), proposals by some Scandinavian governments (Sweden and Finland) to report undocumented migrants, as well as the EU Migration Pact, have all failed to stop the rise of the far-right, and may even fuel it. Research published earlier this year has also demonstrated the costs of concession for social democrats. 

Quotes

Michele Levoy, Director of PICUM: 

“Werefuse to accept a cynical EU that undermines its own values and interests by funding regimes that harm people seeking safety and opportunity and takes resources away from social investment and pours them into border management.”

“Together we must join forces for a compassionate Europe that addresses the many genuine emergencies we face collectively, from deepening inequalities to a looming climate disaster. It is time for all of us across the continent to direct our energies towards building a society we all can live and thrive in.”

Giulia Messmer, spokesperson for Sea-Watch (search and rescue NGO):

“European migration politics is already more right-wing than it has ever been. The individual right to asylum is effectively abolished and human rights violations at the external borders are a legalized system.” 

“The new EU Parliament will capitalize on this and have unseen opportunities to deprive people on the move of their rights. If liberal parties such as the Social Democrats do not want to be mere stooges for the new European fascism, right now is the time for a change of course.”

Isabelle Chopin, Director of the Migration Policy Group:

“The new reality of a stronger presence of far-right forces in the EP means noticeable threats towards advancing policies of inclusion and respect for human rights.”

“The new European Parliament must reiterate its commitment to the fundamental values and principles of equality and non-discrimination and ensure they are given a central place in the work programme of the new European Commission.”

Tineke Strik, MEP:

“The rise of the far-right in Europe means the democratic majority in the European Parliament must come together even stronger in defence of our Union’s fundamental values. The far-right’s playbook of scapegoating minorities, portraying asylum seekers as threats, and cracking down on institutions meant to uphold the Rule of Law is an existential threat to everything the EU stands for. This election outcome requires extra vigilance from all EU institutions. It is key to keep the pressure on the centre right parties not to open the door to the far right, and to give true meaning to the European values. The Parliament must at the same time increase the pressure on a new Commission to prioritise upholding the Rule of Law and fundamental rights and hold Member States accountable. Simultaneously, the Council must form a united front against these rising anti-EU tendencies and the European Parliament’s function of scrutinizing the Commission and defending the democratic voice of EU citizens will become ever-more important. I am personally more determined than ever to continue the fight back against this tide; to do everything in my power to ensure that Europe is a safe, dignified, fundamental-rights-compliant and inclusive home to us all.”

Ysé El Bouhali Bouchet, International Migration Officer at CCFD-Terre Solidaire:

“In 2023 alone, over 110 persons died or went missing in the desert between Tunisia and Libya as a result of the externalisation policies conducted by the EU and its member States. These policies, increasingly adopted with various third countries, pose a direct threat to the human rights of people on the move.
More than ever, it is essential that the new European Parliament fulfill its role in safeguarding the fundamental freedoms and human rights, in particular in the field of international migration cooperation.”

Electoral gains for European far-right parties risk leading to even more human rights violations at the EU’s borders and across Europe, against migrants and racialised people.

The leading European People’s Party look set to continue an approach which has undermined human rights and international law, cost lives, and repeatedly failed in its stated aims. Meanwhile, an increased presence in the European Parliament from far-right groups like the European Conservatives and Reformists and Identity and Democracy will create a powerful lobbying presence for the even more hostile migration policies presented in their manifestos. The main risks include:

A foreign policy that threatens refugee and migrant lives while undermining European security

• The EU looks set to strike more deals with third countries to prevent people from reaching Europe; increasingly also tied to development aid and resource access, thereby distorting European foreign policy aims.
• The EU already struck such deals with Turkey in 2015, with Libya in 2017, with Tunisia in 2023, and with Egypt and Lebanon this very year. 
• This model of pouring millions into third countries, including authoritarian regimes, so they keep people out of Europe, has been proven harmful and lethal time and again – most notably through EU assistance to the Libyan “Coast Guard.” 
• A recent media investigation has revealed how EU funds channelled through these deals are being used by third countries to round up Black migrants across North Africa and dump them in the desert with no aid. The investigation reveals that such operations had been known in Brussels for years.

A border policy that undermines human rights in Europe and paves the way for surveillance and overreach in policing. 

• The EPP promised to triple Frontex staff and increase the agency’s budget and powers (it is already the EU’s largest.) This is despite little evidence of institutional change since the agency was accused of serious rights violations by the EU anti-corruption watchdog OLAF, and found complicit in human rights violations in the Mediterranean by international NGO Human Rights Watch. 
• Former Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri, who resigned after allegations of misconduct from EU anti-fraud agency OLAF, has been elected as an MEP for French far-right party National Rally.
• This follows the sweeping package of rights infringements contained within the New Pact on Migration and Asylum agreed earlier this year.

Increasing deportations to danger

• Right-wing parties across Europe are looking at ramping up deportations of people seeking asylum to supposedly “safe” third countries for the processing of their asylum claim, and for hosting those who would be granted asylum. This would mean more agreements like the UK-Rwanda deal, which has been much criticised by the UN and national institutions and civil society for violating international law and exposing people to abuse and human rights violations. And it would validate and generalise agreements like the one between Italy and Albania, which would see Italy transfer people rescued at sea to the Balkan country with no guarantees against abuses in the new detention centres.

A full overview of what EU parties’ manifestos say about migration can be found here.

On 10 April 2024, the European Parliament adopted the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, a package of reforms expanding the criminalisation and digital surveillance of migrants. 

Despite civil society organisations’ repeated warnings, the Pact “will normalise the arbitrary use of immigration detention, including for children and families, increase racial profiling, use ‘crisis’ procedures to enable pushbacks, and return individuals to so called ‘safe third countries’ where they are at risk of violence, torture, and arbitrary imprisonment”.

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum ushers in a deadly new era of digital surveillance, expanding the digital infrastructure for an EU border regime based on the criminalisation and punishment of migrants and racialised people. 

This statement outlines how the Migration Pact framework will enable and in some cases mandate the deployment of harmful surveillance technologies and practices against migrants. We also highlight some grey zones where the Pact leaves open the possibility for further harmful developments involving intrusive and violent surveillance and data processing practices in the future. 

Migration Pact enables the digital surveillance of migrants 

As more intrusive technology will be deployed at borders and in detention centres,  people’s personal data will be collected in bulk and exchanged between police forces across the EU, and biometric identification systems will be used to track people’s movements and increase policing of undocumented migrants. The New Pact on Migration will mandate a whole range of technological systems to identify, filter, track, assess and control people entering or already in Europe. 

These systems will reinforce an already cruel status quo. European policymakers have opted for years to treat the movement of people into Europe mainly as a security issue. The result is very limited safe and regular pathways to come to Europe, the widespread criminalisation of many who make the journey, and systematic exploitation and discrimination against those already living here. Investing in technology to serve this already harmful system will mainly benefit the tech and security firms who reap the financial rewards of this agenda – while pushing people into more dangerous routes and giving more licence for racial profiling at our borders and in our communities. 

Here are the main ways the Migration Pact creates a dangerous system of migrant surveillance:

• Migrants as suspects: A vast regime of digital monitoring

The Migration Pact expands a wide system of data collection and automatic exchange, leading to a regime of mass surveillance of migrants. The  changes in the Eurodac Regulation will mandate the systematic collection of migrants’ biometric data (now also including facial images), which will be retained in massive databases up to 10 years, exchanged at every step of the migration process and made accessible to police forces across the European Union for tracking and identity checks purposes. The minimum age for data collection was lowered from fourteen to six, with the possibility to use coercion should ‘child friendly’ methods fail.

Further, newly created screening procedures and border procedures (Screening Regulation) will mandate various security checks and assessments of all people entering Europe irregularly, including to seek asylum, with a potential for automated and AI-based decision making. These procedures will require the personal and biometric data of every person who enters the EU to be cross-checked against multiple national and European policing and immigration databases, as well as systems operated by Europol and Interpol, increasing the possibility of transnational repression of human rights defenders. People identified as posing a “risk to national security or public order” will be pushed into accelerated border procedures with fewer safeguards for the processing of the asylum application (Asylum Procedures Regulation and Return Border Procedure Regulation). Not only are concepts of national security and public order dangerously vague and undefined terms leaving wide discretion for Member States, they also pave the way for potentially discriminatory practices in screening procedures, using nationality as a proxy for race and ethnicity in these assessments. Further, even families with children and unaccompanied children could be held in border procedures, with a high risk of being de facto detained.

In the context of asylum procedures, the Pact will enable intrusive technological practices in various stages of asylum processing. The Asylum Procedures Regulation provides for increased searches of personal items, paving the way for invasive practices like the extraction of mobile phone data, which involves seizing and mining personal electronic devices (such as phone or laptop) to extract data that may be used to find evidence to  assess the truthfulness of their claims (for instance, in an asylum proceeding) or check their identity, age or country of origin. Such invasive practices have been successfully challenged in Germany and in the UK but continue to be used in several European countries. Moreover, the Asylum Procedures Regulation also allows for the use of remote interviews and videoconferencing for people in detention and during the appeal procedure. This not only raises privacy and data protection concerns, it heightens the isolation of people who are already in a vulnerable situation and risks negatively affecting the quality and the fairness of the procedures.

• Technological management of prison facilities for migrants

The newly introduced screening and border procedures will lead to more people, including children and families, being held in prison-like detention facilities modelled on the “Closed Controlled Access Centres” already operating in Greece. These centres are characterised by motion-sensors, cameras and fingerprint-access, modelling a system of digital management of immigration facilities that relies on high-tech surveillance to monitor and control people.  Under the Pact, a minimum of 30,000 people are expected to be in “border procedures” at any one time, likely involving  detention or restrictions on movement. Far from treating detention as a “last resort”, chillingly, the Pact foresees the expansion of detention across Europe. 

• Tech-enabled racial profiling at the EU’s internal borders 

Alongside the Migration Pact are other legislative changes to EU migration policy. The Schengen Borders Code Reform, set to be adopted on 24 April 2024, will generalise police checks for the purpose of immigration enforcement, facilitating the practice of racial profiling within EU territory.

This new law encourages the increased use of surveillance and monitoring technologies at both internal and external borders. Technologies such as drones, motion sensors, thermal imaging cameras, and others are used for the identification of people crossing borders prior to arrival and have been shown to facilitate pushbacks. 

Opening the door to future expansion of the border surveillance complex 

The Migration Pact sits upon existing frameworks governing the use of digital surveillance in migration. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act introduces a lenient framework for the use of AI by law enforcement, migration control and national security agencies, provides loopholes and even encourages the use of dangerous surveillance systems on the most marginalised in society. 

In this framework, combined with the Migration Pact and new existing developments in surveillance technology, we can expect:

• Automated profiling and risk assessments for security and vulnerability checks in order to allegedly facilitate decisions related to asylum procedures, security assessments, detention, and deportation of migrants. The Pact alludes to numerous instances in which AI-based decision making may be used, such as during the screening procedure to assess if someone represents a “national security risk” or a threat to the “public security”, or to assess the level of vulnerability of an asylum applicant. Not only may this lead to numerous violations of data protection obligations and infringements of privacy, but by nature violate the right to non-discrimination in the insofar as they codify assumptions about the link between personal data and characteristics with particular risks. The introduction of automated assessment in asylum procedures will mean fewer protections and safeguards, and further divergence from a principle of case-by-case, individualised and needs- based assessments in the access to international protection. 
• The use of forecasting tools that build on biassed statistical data collected on irregular entries and asylum applications to attempt to predict large-scale movements of people, and that can be used to inform actions on the ground to deter or interdict those movements. A similar tool has been tested in the Horizon 2020 project ITFlows. 
• Lie-detectors that claim to tell if someone is being truthful by analysing facial movements, which are dangerous and unreliable enough to be banned under the EU’s AI Act – except in the border and policing contexts.
• Dialect recognition systems and other intrusive technologies used in the context of asylum or visa applications, to assess the veracity of applicants’ claims. This technology, in addition to reinforcing a generalised framework of suspicion towards people seeking asylum, is based on unscientific and often biassed, discriminatory assumptions that inform real-world decisions that have a huge and detrimental impact on people’s lives.
• Border surveillance technologies such as remote biometric identification in border areas, drones and thermal cameras to prevent border crossings into and within the European Union. While some surveillance technologies are already in use, a wide range of systems are heavily tested in EU-funded projects like FOLDOUT Solution, ROBORDER, BorderUAS, Nestor. Their use at internal borders is encouraged by the Schengen Borders Code. 

What’s next?

In its final version, the Pact represents the further embedding of surveillance technologies in the EU, and beyond, as an increasingly key part of its arsenal to sustain Fortress Europe. It therefore represents a further erosion of fundamental rights, and the normalisation of digital surveillance at, and within, borders, justified by an approach to migration policy based on repression rather than rights.  

As the #ProtectNotSurveil coalition, we will continue to challenge the use of digital technologies at different levels of EU policies and practice and advocate for the ability of people to move and to seek safety and opportunity without risking harm, surveillance or discrimination. The coalition will release a more detailed analysis of the digital impacts of the Migration Pact in due course. 

To learn more about the coalition’s work or join our efforts to challenge digital policing in migration, get in touch: info@protectnotsurveil.eu

The #ProtectNotSurveil coalition

Access Now, Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, European Digital Rights (EDRi), Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), Refugee Law Lab, AlgorithmWatch, Amnesty International, Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), EuroMed Rights, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL), European Network Against Racism (ENAR), Homo Digitalis, Privacy International, Statewatch, Dr Derya Ozkul, Dr. Jan Tobias Muehlberg, and  Dr Niovi Vavoula.

In a final plenary vote on April 10, the European Parliament sealed a Migration Pact that will likely lead to widespread human rights violations across Europe and at its borders.

Among potential harms, this would mean that:

• Any person coming to Europe without valid travel documents will likely be detained in border facilities, without exceptions regarding age, including families with babies.
• People who are considered not eligible for asylum will risk being directly channelled into deportation procedures, disregarding other existing national avenues for people to stay in Europe, from medical permits to family reunification.
• People will not have any effective legal representation while they undergo administrative procedures at borders. People who appeal their deportation order can be deported while waiting for a decision on their case.
• Racialised communities living in the EU (including EU citizens) will be increasingly profiled as screening procedures are rolled out to identify people who have, at a certain point, entered irregularly across the bloc.
• Member states will be able to derogate from key safeguards when they claim a third country is pushing people to their borders (which the Pact calls “instrumentalisation of migration”).

Our concerns are echoed by international and national human rights organisations across Europe in previous joint statements calling on EU lawmakers to vote down this Pact.

Michele LeVoy, Director of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), said: “People move. They always have and always will. We need routes for people to move and settle in safety and dignity. But under the EU Migration Pact people will undoubtedly experience even more violence and pushbacks in their migration journey and at borders.”

Charities on both sides of the English Channel have hit out at the new cooperation agreement between EU border agency Frontex and UK authorities signed in London today between UK officials and EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson; citing human rights scandals surrounding both organisations and an enforcement approach that is “flawed from conception.” 

• The “integrated border management” between countries described in today’s deal has had serious consequences. Frontex was recently found to be systematically sharing the coordinates of Mediterranean boats in distress with militias and pirates that return people crossing to conditions of abuse and violence. 
• This news came over a year on from the forced resignation of its former director (now a European Parliament candidate for the French far-right National Rally) over the agency’s complicity and cover-ups in Greece’s deadly border campaign, which was supposed to herald a culture change. 
• The number of UK border drownings has doubled in the past year, which rescue NGO Alarmphone says is linked to Anglo-French border policy. UK and French authorities have faced allegations of serious shortcomings in responding to Channel shipwrecks. 
• Meanwhile the UK continues to attempt to undermine its own courts and international refugee law with its plans to outsource its asylum processes to Rwanda, and its abuse-ridden detention estate is widely documented.

Quotes from organisations responding to the move can be found below. 

Michele LeVoy, Director of the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), said:

“Frontex is signing this new agreement with the UK border forces after countless reports of complicity by the EU agency in serious violence.”

“The plan is flawed from conception. Tougher enforcement does not reduce irregular crossings; it only makes people’s journeys more dangerous. These resources should instead be used to provide safe routes and proper support for people seeking safety.”

Mary Atkinson, Campaigns and Networks Manager at the London-based Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said:

“People move – they always have and always will. It’s something we should welcome, not something which needs to be ‘tackled’ or ‘cracked down’ upon. We urgently need change so that people can move without risking – and too often losing – their lives.

“This latest development is just more of the same tired old thinking. Making our borders more violent has never stopped those in need from coming here and all these measures will do is make it more dangerous. The government needs to wake up and accept that ‘deterrents’ never have – and never will – work. Instead, we need to listen to the evidence and develop policies that prioritise people’s safety and human rights.”

A spokesperson for Calais-based Human Rights Observers said: 

“Frontex, the EU’s biggest agency, which squanders European taxpayers’ money by massively violating human rights, is preparing to land on the French-British border. With at least 28 people killed by the murderous border policies of France and the UK in 2023, the presence of Frontex would only increase the insecurity of people seeking protection.” 

Josephine Valeske at Europe-wide campaign Abolish Frontex said:

“UK border policy has seen deaths by drowning double in the last year, and its government continues to insist on violating both UK and international law by deporting people seeking asylum to Rwanda.” 

“Frontex claims to have made progress on rights – but joining the UK for its new so-called “crackdown” on migration shows that nothing has changed. The EU cannot claim to defend human rights while Frontex continues to exist, and expand a European axis of abuse, at our expense.”