Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently publicly criticized a ruling by a court in Catania that said several Tunisian migrants held at the Pozzallo center in Sicily could not be deported. Specifically, the judge held that detaining new arrivals without making an individual assessment of their case, as well as asking for an economic guarantee as an alternative to detention, is not lawful: “The applicant cannot be detained for the sole purpose of examining his application” and “detention must be considered an exceptional measure.”
This decision, said Meloni, functions to “promote illegal immigration.” The court found that the arrest of the migrants was unwarranted, which may be interpreted as effectively invalidating the Italian government’s reforms that would allow faster border security procedures and empower law enforcement to quickly capture and deport illegal immigrants. It is in this sense that Meloni added that the judge was militating against “a democratically elected government.”
She described the decision as a “unilateral” judgment that Tunisia, the country to which the migrants were to be sent, is unsafe, which was apparently part of the rationale for determining that these migrants had a right to remain in Italy. Meloni went on:
This is not the first time this has happened and unfortunately it will not be the last, but we will continue to do what must be done to defend the legality and the borders of the Italian State.
Sara Kelany, head of the Immigration Department and a member of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, insisted that
By not validating the detention of the four Tunisians subject to the new accelerated border procedures ordered by the government, the court of Catania has made a political and ideological decision … In fact, the orders appear to be poorly anchored in the existing legal framework. I imagine that they will be challenged by the State Bar. I am sorry to see how, once again, law is bent by ideology. The rulings attack not so much the government decree [allowing accelerated border security procedures], but the European legislation on which that decree rests.
The Italian Ministry of Interior has announced they will appeal the decision.
