On 23–24 May, the Centro Internazionale di Quartiere (CIQ), an intercultural hub located in the Corvetto district in southeast Milan, hosted the fourth edition of the “General Assembly on Administrative Detention” (Stati Generali sulla Detenzione Amministativa). Organised by the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI), ActionAid Italy, the magazine Altreconomia, the association for the protection of rights in the penal system Antigone, the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Human Rights (CILD), the legal clinic CLEDU, Le Carbet, Melting Pot, the legal support organisation working with asylum seekers NAGA, the Italian network Mai più lager – No ai CPR (No More Camps), the Italian Society of Migration Medicine (SIMM), Spazi Circolari and the K^B°B° Orchestra, the event brought together a wide range of actors engaged in the fight against administrative detention and the increasing externalisation of border control policies.
Over the course of two intensive days, dozens of speakers took the floor: judges, lawyers, activists, human rights organisations and artists, all involved in concrete actions. The discussions took place via roundtables, workshops, specific panels and a plenary debate focused on the growing legal distortions around the administrative detention of migrants and the critical stakes of EU migration policy, in particular focusing on the externalisation of detention through new centres built and managed in Albania by the Italian government under the agreement signed between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albanian President Edi Rama in November 2023.
In a highly tense political and social climate marked by emergency decrees, controversial bilateral agreements, the outsourcing and tightening of borders to third countries (as in the Albanian case), and increasing infringements of fundamental rights, the current edition of the “General Assembly on Administrative Detention” represented a valuable moment of analysis, knowledge sharing and civic mobilisation vigilance.
The Normalisation of Detention Amid a Continually Undermined Rule of Law
Judge Silvia Albano, magistrate at the Rome Tribunal and president of Magistratura Democratica, a professional association defending judicial independence, opened the first panel with a stark warning: «The judiciary system itself is under threat» – she declared, referring to the legal framework of closed detention centres (in Italy called Centri di Permanenza per il Rimpatrio – CPR, or Repatriation Centres) and the current implementation and upscaling of the Meloni–Rama agreement.
She also underlined the importance of the upcoming hearing scheduled on 9 June before the Constitutional Court in Rome, which will assess the compatibility of the detention centres built by the Italian government on Albanian territory with European Union law.
The core of the problem now lies in the arbitrary designation of certain third countries as “safe,” despite unstable local contexts and individual profiles that clearly do not fit that definition. The initial rejections of such designation by Italian judges triggered an institutional crisis, leading to the adoption of the Decree-Law N. 158/2024, titled “Urgent Provisions Regarding Procedures for the Recognition of International Protection,” October 23, 2024. It is a so-called “emergency decree” imposing urgent measures on asylum procedures and unilaterally changing the list of “safe countries” without transparency or verifiable legal grounds, which is contributing to progressively undermining the right to asylum.
«We are witnessing the rise of a ‘premierato’, a system promoted by Giorgia Meloni’s coalition to elect the prime minister by popular vote, de facto leading to a reality where the executive legislates constantly, often without technical or legal basis» is what the legal experts repeatedly warned during the opening session.
Legal Fictions and Externalised Borders
One of the most troubling aspects is the concept of “fiction of non-entry”, which holds that individuals detained in centres located outside EU territory are not officially considered to have entered the Union. This notion refers to a legal fiction that allows for a disjunction between a person’s physical presence and their legal status regarding entry and stay on national territory and it is generally applied to individuals who cross a border without authorisation. Initially implemented in transit zones (also known as “hotspots”) and official entry points, its application has gradually expanded to other areas within European territory.
In this context, the protocol signed with Albania is particularly significant, as it effectively creates an “externalised border zone”, one lacking a solid legal basis for detention and deportation. This generates a legal vacuum that severely restricts access to fundamental rights and undermines judicial oversight.
This worrisome scenario was powerfully illustrated the following day during the presentation of the critical mapping project “CHIUSI DENTRO. DALL’ALTO. I campi di confinamento dei migranti nell’Europa del XXI secolo” (in English: “Locked In. From Above: The confinement camps of migrants in 21st-Century Europe”), led by Altreconomia’s editor-in-chief Duccio Facchini.
Although Albania’s Constitutional Court approved the agreement with Italy on 29 January 2024, stating ruling did not imply a transfer of sovereignty, several Italian magistrates continue to challenge its legitimacy. One early ruling stated that in the absence of a clear provision authorising detention in the ratification law, such detention cannot be considered automatic.
The conversion law passed by a vote of confidence in the Senate on 20 May 2025 worsened the situation, expanding the grounds for detaining asylum seekers transferred to Albania, drastically shortening appeal deadlines, and offering no adequate legal aid guarantees in Albanian territory.
Meanwhile, the most recent development concerns two preliminary rulings by the Court of Cassation, which referred the Interior Ministry’s appeals against the Rome Court of Appeal’s rejection of detention orders to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). These rulings raise serious concerns about the compatibility of transfers and detentions at the Gjadër centre with EU law.
At the centre of the debate is whether Italian Law No. 14/2024, which already authorises the transfer of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to Albania even in the absence of a concrete prospect of return, is compatible with Directive 2008/115/EC (the “Return Directive”) and Directive 2013/32/EU (on common asylum procedures). Pending an urgent response from the CJEU in Luxembourg, these judicial proceedings remain temporarily suspended.
Digital Surveillance and Fundamental Rights at Risk
On the first day of the Assembly, the lawyer Martina Stefanile provided a precise and significant analysis of the controversial use of coercive digital tools, particularly focusing on how recent decrees impose forced access to mobile phones, even for asylum seekers who are not in detention.
According to Stefanile, this represents a severe violation of the right to privacy and the confidentiality of communication. Current law does not guarantee the presence of a lawyer during data extraction, nor are effective remedies available. Moreover, the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which came into effect on 1 August 2024, establishes a regulatory framework for AI systems, including those used in border management. It authorises the automated, and even ‘emotional’, analysis of data extracted from personal devices.
The Death of Moussa Balde: A Symbol of a Lethal and Opaque System
The Lawyer Gianluca Vitale concluded the morning session by recalling the death of Moussa Balde, a young Guinean man who took his own life on 23 May 2021 in cell no. 9 of the Turin’s detention centre. Brutally assaulted in Ventimiglia, he was then placed in solitary confinement in one of the notoriously inhumane “chicken cages” of the centre in Corso Filippo Brunelleschi, in the western area of the city.
Now the subject of a trial in Turin, his death has become emblematic of a dehumanising detention system that continues to kill. «This trial risks becoming a missed opportunity to shed light on the entire institutional framework» Vitale warned.
The Milan forum was held in his memory to maintain citizen vigilance and prevent such tragedies from being normalised. Since Moussa’s death, deaths in detention have continued unabated.
The most recent case is that of Hamid Badoui, a 42-year-old Moroccan man who ended his life in isolation, overwhelmed by the prospect of being returned to the Gjadër centre. His suicide is not an isolated case but a symptom of a brutal migration regime that treats people as quotas to be filled in detention centres, rather than lives to protect. His death once again stems from policies that criminalise mobility. A memorial gathering was scheduled for the afternoon of 31 May in front of the detention centre in Albania, where he had been held for about a month before being transferred to the “Lorusso e Cutugno” prison in Turin. As he told his lawyer: «Prison is better than staying in the CPR. I will not return to Albania. »
Neocolonial Context and Civil Resistance in Albania
Aiming at clarifying the situation in Albania and challenge the misinformation surrounding Rome–Tirana relations, particularly the recurring rhetoric of supposed “gratitude” owed by the Albanian people to Italy, which fuels a discourse of subordination aligned with a neocolonial logic, the journalist Nicoletta Alessio (Melting Pot Europa), an expert in border ethnography, led a critical session on the so-called “operation Albania”. On this occasion, the dramatic episodes of Italy–Albania relations over the past 30 years were recounted with historical and social accuracy: from the ‘Vlora’ ship’s carrying an estimated 20,000 Albanian refugees disembarking the Italian Adriatic coasts on August 8, 1991, following with their detention in Bari’s stadium turned concentration camp, to the Kateri i Radës shipwreck known as the “Otranto tragedy”, when a fragile boat was hit by the Italian navy on 28 March 1997 in international waters, during a blockade operation authorised by the Prodi government in agreement with Albanian President Sali Berisha, without parliamentary approval or rules of engagement. The incident killed around 100 people, many of them women and children fleeing civil war, as the ship sank after being attacked by the Italian warship Sibilla in the Strait of Otranto. Today, Alessio stressed, the Rama–Meloni pact follows a neocolonial logic: Albania becomes Italy’s “backyard”, conceived as a place to hide the violence of CPRs from public scrutiny while retaining full control.
In this context, the Melting Pot Europa network, along with Zanë Kolektiv and Europe Other, conducted a mapping project between March and May 2024 with Albanian activists, journalists and organisations. The effort culminated in a three-part podcast on early resistance movements against the agreement, titled Zëri i Shqipërisë (Voice of Albania). Before the protest reacting to Hamid Badoui’s death, the Network Against Migrant Detention had already organised civil society’s demonstrations in December 2024 in Tirana and at the Shëngjin and Gjadër centres, as reported by Igor Zecchini on behalf of Mai più lager – NO ai CPR and Fioralba Duma representing of Meshde, who contributed from Tirana.
Parliamentary Inspections and Political Opposition
The Italian Member of Parliament Rachele Scarpa, who recently took part in monitoring missions in Albania, highlighted how the initiative pushed by the Meloni government has finally driven Italian and European lawmakers to exercise greater democratic oversight, visiting extraterritorial detention centres for their first time.
«At least twenty members of the Italian Parliament» Scarpa reported «managed to enter the centres in Albania and review the registers of critical incidents. This first step toward structured inspection offers both a learning opportunity and a political lever to understand what is really happening across the Adriatic, in ‘our name’, and to finally question the legal and logistical framework of this agreement».
At the close of the General Assembly, reflecting on its outcomes, Francesco Ferri, migration policy expert at ActionAid Italy and representative of the Asylum and Immigration Roundtable (TAI), contributing to the assembly as a panellist on the Albania detention centre session, emphasised: «The consistent and wide participation in this fourth edition proves just how urgent the issue of administrative detention is for many people. Beyond analysing coercive mechanisms, this 2-days forum was an opportunity to reflect on resistance strategies amid today’s complex political context in Italy and across Europe, starting with the Albanian case. »
Thus, the General Assembly on Administrative Detention reaffirmed its role as an indispensable space for public denunciation, legal scrutiny, and political mobilisation. At a time when the management of migration flows is increasingly outsourced to mechanisms of repression and agreements with controversial regimes in third countries, the forum in Milan delivered a clear message: it is no longer possible to invoke a Europe of rights while new spaces of exception are being constructed, out of sight and beyond the reach of protection, civic oversight, and the right to asylum.
