• Belgique: La Chambre adopte la loi «Frontex»

    La Chambre a adopté jeudi en séance plénière un projet de loi permettant à du personnel de l’agence européenne Frontex d’effectuer des contrôles aux frontières belges et d’escorter des #retours_forcés d’étrangers.

    Porté par la ministre de l’Intérieur #Annelies_Verlinden (CD&V), ce projet de loi donnera l’occasion à ces agents d’effectuer ces contrôles frontaliers dans les #aéroports, les #ports, la #gare de #Bruxelles-Midi ainsi que dans son terminal #Eurostar, soit aux #frontières_extérieures de l’espace Schengen.

    Le texte a été adapté à la suite de l’avis du Conseil d’État. Ainsi, l’intervention de Frontex ne pourra avoir lieu qu’en présence et sous l’autorité de policiers belges. Le nombre d’agents Frontex actifs sur le territoire belge sera limité à cent. Ces actions seront aussi menées sous le contrôle du Comité P. Dans la majorité, Ecolo-Groen, le PS, mais aussi la ministre ont rappelé ces balises lors de la discussion générale.

    Le texte a été largement critiqué par plusieurs organisations ces derniers jours, dont le Ciré (Coordination et Initiatives pour Réfugiés et Étrangers).

    Annelies Verlinden a déploré une « désinformation qui n’aide pas au débat équilibré qu’on a connu en commission », tout en disant « comprendre » les inquiétudes exprimées.

    Il a été adopté par la majorité, moins les abstentions de Simon Moutquin (Ecolo), Khalil Aouasti (PS) et Hervé Rigot (PS). Le PTB, DéFI ainsi que Vanessa Matz (Les Engagés) ont pour leur part voté contre.

    https://www.rtl.be/actu/belgique/politique/la-chambre-adopte-la-loi-frontex/2024-05-03/article/665018

    #Belgique #loi_Frontex #Frontex #contrôles_migratoires #frontières #migrations #réfugiés

  • EU’s AI Act Falls Short on Protecting Rights at Borders

    Despite years of tireless advocacy by a coalition of civil society and academics (including the author), the European Union’s new law regulating artificial intelligence falls short on protecting the most vulnerable. Late in the night on Friday, Dec. 8, the European Parliament reached a landmark deal on its long-awaited Act to Govern Artificial Intelligence (AI Act). After years of meetings, lobbying, and hearings, the EU member states, Commission, and the Parliament agreed on the provisions of the act, awaiting technical meetings and formal approval before the final text of the legislation is released to the public. A so-called “global first” and racing ahead of the United States, the EU’s bill is the first ever regional attempt to create an omnibus AI legislation. Unfortunately, this bill once again does not sufficiently recognize the vast human rights risks of border technologies and should go much further protecting the rights of people on the move.

    From surveillance drones patrolling the Mediterranean to vast databases collecting sensitive biometric information to experimental projects like robo-dogs and AI lie detectors, every step of a person’s migration journey is now impacted by risky and unregulated border technology projects. These technologies are fraught with privacy infringements, discriminatory decision-making, and even impact the life, liberty, and security of person seeking asylum. They also impact procedural rights, muddying responsibility over opaque and discretionary decisions and lacking clarity in mechanisms of redress when something goes wrong.

    The EU’s AI Act could have been a landmark global standard for the protection of the rights of the most vulnerable. But once again, it does not provide the necessary safeguards around border technologies. For example, while recognizing that some border technologies could fall under the high-risk category, it is not yet clear what, if any, border tech projects will be included in the final high-risk category of projects that are subject to transparency obligations, human rights impact assessments, and greater scrutiny. The Act also has various carveouts and exemptions in place, for example for matters of national security, which can encapsulate technologies used in migration and border enforcement. And crucial discussions around bans on high-risk technologies in migration never even made it into the Parliament’s final deal terms at all. Even the bans which have been announced, for example around emotion recognition, are only in place in the workplace and education, not at the border. Moreover, what exactly is banned remains to be seen, and outstanding questions to be answered in the final text include the parameters around predictive policing as well as the exceptions to the ban on real-time biometric surveillance, still allowed in instances of a “threat of terrorism,” targeted search for victims, or the prosecution of serious crimes. It is also particularly troubling that the AI Act explicitly leaves room for technologies which are of particular appetite for Frontex, the EU’s border force. Frontex released its AI strategy on Nov. 9, signaling an appetite for predictive tools and situational analysis technology. These tools, which when used without safeguards, can facilitate illegal border interdiction operations, including “pushbacks,” in which the agency has been investigated. The Protect Not Surveil Coalition has been trying to influence European policy makers to ban predictive analytics used for the purposes of border enforcement. Unfortunately, no migration tech bans at all seem to be in the final Act.

    The lack of bans and red lines under the high-risk uses of border technologies in the EU’s position is in opposition to years of academic research as well as international guidance, such as by then-U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, E. Tendayi Achiume. For example, a recently released report by the University of Essex and the UN’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner (OHCHR), which I co-authored with Professor Lorna McGregor, argues for a human rights based approach to digital border technologies, including a moratorium on the most high risk border technologies such as border surveillance, which pushes people on the move into dangerous terrain and can even assist with illegal border enforcement operations such as forced interdictions, or “pushbacks.” The EU did not take even a fraction of this position on border technologies.

    While it is promising to see strict regulation of high-risk AI systems such as self-driving cars or medical equipment, why are the risks of unregulated AI technologies at the border allowed to continue unabated? My work over the last six years spans borders from the U.S.-Mexico corridor to the fringes of Europe to East Africa and beyond, and I have witnessed time and again how technological border violence operates in an ecosystem replete with the criminalization of migration, anti-migrant sentiments, overreliance on the private sector in an increasingly lucrative border industrial complex, and deadly practices of border enforcement, leading to thousands of deaths at borders. From vast biometric data collected without consent in refugee camps, to algorithms replacing visa officers and making discriminatory decisions, to AI lie detectors used at borders to discern apparent liars, the roll out of unregulated technologies is ever-growing. The opaque and discretionary world of border enforcement and immigration decision-making is built on societal structures which are underpinned by intersecting systemic racism and historical discrimination against people migrating, allowing for high-risk technological experimentation to thrive at the border.

    The EU’s weak governance on border technologies will allow for more and more experimental projects to proliferate, setting a global standard on how governments will approach migration technologies. The United States is no exception, and in an upcoming election year where migration will once again be in the spotlight, there does not seem to be much incentive to regulate technologies at the border. The Biden administration’s recently released Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence does not offer a regulatory framework for these high-risk technologies, nor does it discuss the impacts of border technologies on people migrating, including taking a human rights based approach to the vast impacts of these projects on people migrating. Unfortunately, the EU often sets a precedent for how other countries govern technology. With the weak protections offered by the EU AI act on border technologies, it is no surprise that the U.S. government is emboldened to do as little as possible to protect people on the move from harmful technologies.

    But real people already are at the centre of border technologies. People like Mr. Alvarado, a young husband and father from Latin America in his early 30s who perished mere kilometers away from a major highway in Arizona, in search of a better life. I visited his memorial site after hours of trekking through the beautiful yet deadly Sonora desert with a search-and-rescue group. For my upcoming book, The Walls have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, I was documenting the growing surveillance dragnet of the so-called smart border that pushes people to take increasingly dangerous routes, leading to increasing loss of life at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border technologies as a deterrent simply do not work. People desperate for safety – and exercising their internationally protected right to asylum – will not stop coming. They will instead more circuitous routes, and scholars like Geoffrey Boyce and Samuel Chambers have already documented a threefold increase in deaths at the U.S.-Mexico frontier as the so-called smart border expands. In the not so distant future, will people like Mr. Alvarado be pursued by the Department of Homeland Security’s recently announced robo-dogs, a military grade technology that is sometimes armed?

    It is no accident that more robust governance around migration technologies is not forthcoming. Border spaces increasingly serve as testing grounds for new technologies, places where regulation is deliberately limited and where an “anything goes” frontier attitude informs the development and deployment of surveillance at the expense of people’s lives. There is also big money to be made in developing and selling high risk technologies. Why does the private sector get to time and again determine what we innovate on and why, in often problematic public-private partnerships which states are increasingly keen to make in today’s global AI arms race? For example, whose priorities really matter when we choose to create violent sound cannons or AI-powered lie detectors at the border instead of using AI to identify racist border guards? Technology replicates power structures in society. Unfortunately, the viewpoints of those most affected are routinely excluded from the discussion, particularly around areas of no-go-zones or ethically fraught usages of technology.

    Seventy-seven border walls and counting are now cutting across the landscape of the world. They are both physical and digital, justifying broader surveillance under the guise of detecting illegal migrants and catching terrorists, creating suitable enemies we can all rally around. The use of military, or quasi-military, autonomous technology bolsters the connection between immigration and national security. None of these technologies, projects, and sets of decisions are neutral. All technological choices – choices about what to count, who counts, and why – have an inherently political dimension and replicate biases that render certain communities at risk of being harmed, communities that are already under-resourced, discriminated against, and vulnerable to the sharpening of borders all around the world.

    As is once again clear with the EU’s AI Act and the direction of U.S. policy on AI so far, the impacts on real people seems to have been forgotten. Kowtowing to industry and making concessions for the private sector not to stifle innovation does not protect people, especially those most marginalized. Human rights standards and norms are the bare minimum in the growing panopticon of border technologies. More robust and enforceable governance mechanisms are needed to regulate the high-risk experiments at borders and migration management, including a moratorium on violent technologies and red lines under military-grade technologies, polygraph machines, and predictive analytics used for border interdictions, at the very least. These laws and governance mechanisms must also include efforts at local, regional, and international levels, as well as global co-operation and commitment to a human-rights based approach to the development and deployment of border technologies. However, in order for more robust policy making on border technologies to actually affect change, people with lived experiences of migration must also be in the driver’s seat when interrogating both the negative impacts of technology as well as the creative solutions that innovation can bring to the complex stories of human movement.

    https://www.justsecurity.org/90763/eus-ai-act-falls-short-on-protecting-rights-at-borders

    #droits #frontières #AI #IA #intelligence_artificielle #Artificial_Intelligence_Act #AI_act #UE #EU #drones #Méditerranée #mer_Méditerranée #droits_humains #technologie #risques #surveillance #discrimination #transparence #contrôles_migratoires #Frontex #push-backs #refoulements #privatisation #business #complexe_militaro-industriel #morts_aux_frontières #biométrie #données #racisme #racisme_systémique #expérimentation #smart_borders #frontières_intelligentes #pouvoir #murs #barrières_frontalières #terrorisme

    • The Walls Have Eyes. Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

      A chilling exposé of the inhumane and lucrative sharpening of borders around the globe through experimental surveillance technology

      “Racism, technology, and borders create a cruel intersection . . . more and more people are getting caught in the crosshairs of an unregulated and harmful set of technologies touted to control borders and ‘manage migration,’ bolstering a multibillion-dollar industry.” —from the introduction

      In 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was training “robot dogs” to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border against migrants. Four-legged machines equipped with cameras and sensors would join a network of drones and automated surveillance towers—nicknamed the “smart wall.” This is part of a worldwide trend: as more people are displaced by war, economic instability, and a warming planet, more countries are turning to A.I.-driven technology to “manage” the influx.

      Based on years of researching borderlands across the world, lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes is a truly global story—a dystopian vision turned reality, where your body is your passport and matters of life and death are determined by algorithm. Examining how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation, Molnar also shows us how borders are now big business, with defense contractors and tech start-ups alike scrambling to capture this highly profitable market.

      With a foreword by former U.N. Special Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume, The Walls Have Eyes reveals the profound human stakes, foregrounding the stories of people on the move and the daring forms of resistance that have emerged against the hubris and cruelty of those seeking to use technology to turn human beings into problems to be solved.

      https://thenewpress.com/books/walls-have-eyes
      #livre #Petra_Molnar

  • « Contrôler » les migrations : entre laisser-mourir et permis de tuer

    À l’heure où le Conseil européen se réunit à Bruxelles, les 26 et 27 octobre 2023, pour évoquer, dans un monde en plein bouleversement, le renforcement des frontières européennes, le réseau Migreurop rappelle le prix exorbitant de cette #surenchère_sécuritaire et la #responsabilité accablante des États européens dans la #mise_en_danger constante des personnes en migration, qui tentent d’exercer leur #droit_à_la_mobilité au prix de leur vie.

    Depuis plus de 30 ans, la lutte contre l’immigration dite « clandestine » est la priorité des États européens, qui ont adopté diverses stratégies visant au fil des années à renforcer les #contrôles_migratoires et la sécuritisation des frontières des pays de destination, de transit et de départ. Quoi qu’il en coûte. Y compris au prix de vies humaines, les #morts_en_migration étant perçues par les autorités comme une conséquence dommageable de cette même « lutte ».

    Comme le dénonçait déjà Migreurop en 2009, « nombreuses sont les #frontières où tombent des dizaines de migrants, parfois tués par les #forces_de_l’ordre : des soldats égyptiens tirant à vue sur des Soudanais et des Érythréens à la frontière israélienne ; des soldats turcs abattant des Iraniens et des Afghans ; la marine marocaine provoquant sur les côtes d’Al Hoceima le naufrage de 36 personnes en partance pour l’Espagne (…) en perforant leur zodiac à coups de couteaux ; des policiers français à Mayotte faisant échouer volontairement des embarcations (Kwassa-kwassa) pour arrêter des migrants, engendrant ainsi la noyade de plusieurs d’entre eux. En Algérie, au Maroc, des migrants africains sont refoulés et abandonnés dans le désert, parfois miné, sans aucun moyen de subsistance » [1].

    Si l’objectif sécuritaire de #surveillance et #militarisation_des_frontières européennes reste le même, la stratégie mise en œuvre par les États européens pour ne pas répondre à l’impératif d’accueil des populations exilées a évolué au fil des années. Depuis des décennies, les « drames » se répètent sur le parcours migratoire. Ils ne relèvent en aucun cas de la #fatalité, de l’#irresponsabilité des exilé·e·s (ou de leurs proches [2]), du climat ou de l’environnement, de l’état de la mer, ou même d’abus de faiblesse de quelconques trafiquants, mais bien d’une politique étatique hostile aux personnes exilées, développée en toute conscience à l’échelle européenne, se traduisant par des législations et des pratiques attentatoires aux droits et mortifères : systématisation à l’échelle européenne des #refoulements aux portes de l’Europe [3], déploiement de dispositifs « anti-migrants » le long des frontières et littoraux (murs et clôtures [4], canons sonores [5], barrages flottants [6], barbelés à lames de rasoir [7], …), conditionnement de l’aide au développement à la lutte contre les migrations [8], #criminalisation du sauvetage civil [9]... Une stratégie qualifiée, en référence au concept créé par Achille Mbembe [10], de « #nécro-politique » lors de la sentence rendue par le Tribunal Permanent des Peuples en France, en 2018 [11].

    Déjà en août 2017, le rapport relatif à « la mort illégale de réfugiés et de migrants » de la rapporteuse spéciale du Conseil des droits de l’Homme onusien sur les exécutions extrajudiciaires, sommaires ou arbitraires, mettait en évidence « de multiples manquements des États en matière de respect et de protection du #droit_à_la_vie des réfugiés et des migrants, tels que des homicides illégaux, y compris par l’emploi excessif de la force et du fait de politiques et pratiques de #dissuasion aggravant le #danger_de_mort » [12].

    Mettant en place une véritable stratégie du #laisser-mourir, les États européens ont favorisé l’errance en mer en interdisant les débarquements des bateaux en détresse (Italie 2018 [13]), ont retiré de la mer Méditerranée les patrouilles navales au bénéfice d’une surveillance aérienne (2019 [14]), signe du renoncement au secours et au sauvetage en mer, ou en se considérant subitement « ports non-sûrs » (Italie et Malte 2020 [15]). Migreurop a également pointé du doigt la responsabilité directe des autorités et/ou des forces de l’ordre coupables d’exactions à l’égard des exilé·e·s (Balkans 2021 [16]), ou encore leur franche complicité (UE/Libye 2019 [17]).

    Le naufrage d’au moins 27 personnes dans la Manche le 24 novembre 2021 [18], fruit de la non-assistance à personnes en danger des deux côtés de la frontière franco-britannique, est une illustration de cette politique de dissuasion et du laisser-mourir. Le #naufrage de #Pylos, le 14 juin 2023, en mer Ionienne [19], est quant à lui un exemple d’action directe ayant provoqué la mort de personnes exilées. La manœuvre tardive (accrocher une corde puis tirer le bateau à grande vitesse) des garde-côtes grecs pour « remorquer » le chalutier sur lequel se trouvaient environ 700 exilé·e·s parti·e·s de Libye pour atteindre les côtes européennes, a probablement causé les remous qui ont fait chavirer le bateau en détresse et provoqué la noyade d’au moins 80 personnes, la mer ayant englouti les centaines de passager·e·s disparu·e·s.

    Le rapport des Nations unies de 2017 [20] pointe également les conséquences de l’#externalisation des politiques migratoires européennes et indique que « les autres violations du droit à la vie résultent de politiques d’extraterritorialité revenant à fournir aide et assistance à la privation arbitraire de la vie, de l’incapacité à empêcher les morts évitables et prévisibles et du faible nombre d’enquêtes sur ces morts illégales ». Le massacre du 24 juin 2022 aux frontières de Nador/Melilla [21], ayant coûté la vie à au moins 23 exilés en partance pour l’Espagne depuis le Maroc, désignés comme des « assaillants », 17 ans après le premier massacre documenté aux portes de Ceuta et Melilla [22], est un clair exemple de cette externalisation pernicieuse ayant entraîné la mort de civils. Tout comme les exactions subies en toute impunité ces derniers mois par les exilé·e·s Noir·e·s en Tunisie, en pleine dérive autoritaire, fruits du #racisme_structurel et du #marchandage européen pour le #contrôle_des_frontières [23].

    Nous assistons ainsi ces dernières années à un processus social et juridique de légitimation de législations et pratiques étatiques illégales visant à bloquer les mouvements migratoires, coûte que coûte, ayant pour conséquence l’abaissement des standards en matière de respect des droits. Un effritement considérable du droit d’asile, une légitimation confondante des refoulements – « légalisés » par l’Espagne (2015 [24]), la Pologne (2021 [25]) et la Lituanie (2023 [26]) –, une violation constante de l’obligation de secours en mer, et enfin, un permis de tuer rendu possible par la progressive #déshumanisation des personne exilées racisées, criminalisées pour ce qu’elles sont et représentent [27].

    Les frontières sont assassines [28] mais les États tuent également, en toute #impunité. Ces dernières années, il est manifeste que les acteurs du contrôle migratoire oscillent entre #inaction et action coupables, entre laisser-mourir (« let them drown, this is a good deterrence » [29]) et permis de tuer donné aux acteurs du contrôle frontalier, au nom de la guerre aux migrant·e·s, ces dernier·e·s étant érigé·e·s en menace(s) dont il faudrait se protéger.

    Les arguments avancés de longue date par les autorités nationales et européennes pour se dédouaner de ces si nombreux décès en migration sont toujours les mêmes : la défense d’une frontière, d’un territoire ou de l’ordre public. Les #décès survenus sur le parcours migratoire ne seraient ainsi que des « dommages collatéraux » d’une #stratégie_de_dissuasion dans laquelle la #violence, en tant que moyen corrélé à l’objectif de non-accueil et de mise à distance, est érigée en norme. L’agence européenne #Frontex contribue par sa mission de surveillance des frontières européennes à la mise en danger des personnes exilées [30]. Elle est une composante sécuritaire essentielle de cette #politique_migratoire violente et impunie [31], et de cette stratégie d’« irresponsabilité organisée » de l’Europe [32].

    Dans cet #apartheid_des_mobilités [33], où la hiérarchisation des droits au nom de la protection des frontières européennes est la règle, les décès des personnes exilées constituent des #risques assumés de part et d’autre, la responsabilité de ces morts étant transférée aux premier·e·s concerné·e·s et leurs proches, coupables d’avoir voulu braver l’interdiction de se déplacer, d’avoir exercé leur droit à la mobilité… A leurs risques et périls.

    Au fond, le recul que nous donne ces dernières décennies permet de mettre en lumière que ces décès en migration, passés de « évitables » à « tolérables », puis à « nécessaires » au nom de la protection des frontières européennes, ne sont pas des #cas_isolés, mais bien la conséquence logique de l’extraordinaire latitude donnée aux acteurs du contrôle frontalier au nom de la guerre aux migrant·e·s 2.0. Une dérive qui se banalise dans une #indifférence sidérante, et qui reste impunie à ce jour...

    Le réseau Migreurop continuera d’œuvrer en faveur de la liberté de circulation et d’installation [34] de toutes et tous, seule alternative permettant d’échapper à cette logique criminelle, documentée par nos organisations depuis bien trop longtemps.

    https://migreurop.org/article3211.html
    #nécropolitique #mourir_aux_frontières #morts_aux_frontières #guerre_aux_migrants

  • Missing in #Brooks_County: A tragic outcome of U.S. border and migration policy

    Since the 1990s, tens of thousands of migrants have died painful deaths, usually of dehydration and exposure, on U.S. soil. Their remains are only occasionally found. The migrants began taking ever more hazardous routes after the Clinton and subsequent administrations started building up border-security infrastructure and #Border_Patrol presence in more populated areas.

    The crisis is particularly acute in a sparsely populated county in south #Texas, about 70 miles north of the border, where migrants’ smugglers encourage them to walk around a longstanding Border Patrol highway checkpoint. Many of them get lost in the hot, dry surrounding ranchland and go missing.

    The WOLA Podcast discussed the emergency in Brooks County, Texas in October 2020, when we heard from Eddie Canales of the South Texas Human Rights Center.

    Eddie features prominently in “Missing in Brooks County,” a new documentary co-directed and produced by Lisa Molomot and Jeff Bemiss. Molomot and Bemiss visited the county 15 times over 4 years, and their film shows the crisis from the perspective of migrants, family members, Border Patrol agents, ranchers, humanitarian workers like Eddie, and experts trying to help identify remains and help loved ones achieve closure.

    One of those experts, featured in some of the most haunting scenes in “Missing in Brooks County,” is anthropologist Kate Spradley of Texas State University, who has sought to bring order to a chaotic process of recovering, handling, and identifying migrants’ remains.

    In this episode of the podcast, Lisa Molomot, Jeff Bemiss, and Kate Spradley join WOLA’s Adam Isacson to discuss the causes of the tragedy in Brooks County and elsewhere along the border; why it has been so difficult to resolve the crisis; how they made the film; how U.S. federal and local government policies need to change, and much more.

    https://www.wola.org/analysis/missing-in-brooks-county-a-tragic-outcome-of-u-s-border-and-migration-policy
    #USA #Etats-Unis #décès #morts #mourir_aux_frontières #Mexique #frontières #asile #migrations #réfugiés #contrôles_migratoires #désert #déshydratation #weaponization #frontières_mobiles #zones_frontalières #checkpoints #chiens #statistiques #chiffres #chasse #propriété_privée #prevention_through_deterrence #mortalité
    #podcast #audio

  • La #coopération UE-Égypte sur les politiques migratoires : dépolitiser les enjeux, soutenir un régime autoritaire

    Le président égyptien Abdel-Fattah #Al-Sissi affirme avec fierté qu’aucun bateau d’immigration dite « clandestine » n’a quitté les côtes égyptiennes depuis 2016 à destination de l’Europe – un discours largement démenti par les communautés migrantes en Égypte. Or, depuis 2016, la coopération entre l’#Union_Européenne et l’Égypte sur le contrôle des migrations n’a cessé de s’accroître, permettant la création d’un « Comité national de lutte contre l’immigration irrégulière et le trafic d’êtres humains », la promulgation d’un texte de loi réprimant le trafic des passeurs, ainsi que la tenue de dizaines d’« ateliers » internationaux à destination des garde-frontières, policiers et juges égyptien·ne·s.

    Le texte de 2017 définissant les priorités de partenariat entre l’Union Européenne et l’Égypte affirme que cette coopération est « guidée par un engagement commun pour les valeurs universelles de démocratie, de l’État de droit et du respect des droits humains ». Pourtant, depuis l’arrivée au pouvoir du régime militaire d’Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi en 2013, le nombre de prisonnièr·e·s politiques est estimé à plus de 60 000 (Human Rights Watch, 2018). Les militant·e·s des droits humains et les avocat·e·s en droit des personnes étrangères, accusé·e·s de « porter atteinte à la sûreté de l’État », ont été particulièrement ciblé·e·s par cette répression. Les arrestations et la détention des personnes étrangères (y compris celles qui possèdent un statut de réfugié·e) ont également augmenté de manière exponentielle entre 2015 et 2017. Le gouvernement militaire du maréchal Al-Sissi a par ailleurs défini les zones frontières comme des « zones militaires » où la répression des migrations irrégularisées échappe à tout contrôle de la loi.

    Alors que les dispositifs d’accueil et de protection des organisations internationales sur le territoire égyptien ne cessent de se dégrader, le gouvernement « gère » l’accueil des personnes migrantes et réfugiées avec des méthodes contre-terroristes. Dans ce contexte, et en totale opposition avec les valeurs affichées, la coopération européenne avec l’État égyptien agit comme un soutien au gouvernement autoritaire d’Al-Sissi et à sa politique de répression généralisée des personnes en migration tout comme des citoyen·ne·s égyptien·ne·s.

    Le présent rapport - fruit d’une enquête de terrain de cinq mois (octobre 2019-février 2020) basée principalement au Caire - s’attache à déconstruire les discours officiels sur la question migratoire en Égypte, en montrant que la coopération euro-égyptienne sur la « gestion migratoire » a servi de prétexte à une forte instrumentalisation de la question des migrations par le gouvernement égyptien depuis 2013-2014. Loin d’avoir garanti les droits des personnes en migration en application du droit international, cette coopération a entraîné une dégradation des libertés et des conditions de vie pour l’ensemble de la population (nationale, immigrée, réfugiée) vivant sur le territoire égyptien. Une coopération, qui répond avant tout aux intérêts stratégiques des États membres de l’UE et de l’État égyptien...

    https://migreurop.org/article3072.html?lang=fr

    #migrations #asile #réfugiés #Egypte #externalisation #frontières #contrôles_migratoires #partenariat #UE #EU #union_européenne #rapport #migreurop

    –-

    ajouté à la métaliste sur l’externalisation des politiques migratoires :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/731749

    et plus précisément :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/731749#message767801

  • En #1926, les entraves à la migration tuaient déjà en Méditerranée

    Alors que la « #liberté_de_voyage » avait été reconnue aux « indigènes » par la loi du 15 juillet 1914, les #circulaires_Chautemps de 1924 établirent un nouveau régime de contrôle migratoire entre les départements d’#Algérie et la métropole. Les promesses d’égalité formulées à la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale s’estompant, les arguments des partisans d’un contrôle des déplacements furent entendus.

    Les « #Algériens_musulmans » furent les seuls passagers ciblés par la mise en place d’autorisations de traversée, officiellement destinées aux personnes embarquant en 3e ou 4e classe. Jusqu’à la suppression (provisoire) de ces dispositions à l’été 1936, une partie des voyageurs les contournèrent en embarquant clandestinement à fond de cale, périples qui prirent parfois un tour dramatique rappelant que la #létalité des #contrôles_migratoires doit être réinscrite dans une histoire longue des prétentions à entraver les circulations humaines.

    Un « drame » médiatisé

    Il reste peu de traces de ces traversées macabres de la Méditerranée mais la presse de l’époque se fit un large écho de « l’horrible drame du #Sidi_Ferruch ». Le 27 avril 1926, à la suite d’une dénonciation, onze Marocains embarqués clandestinement à Alger furent découverts asphyxiés dans les cales du bateau éponyme qui faisait escale à Marseille. Comme le décrivent des rapports de police conservés aux Archives des Bouches-du-Rhône, ils avaient été cachés « dans les ballasts du navire, sous les machines » où la température pouvait monter jusqu’à 70 degrés. Dix-neuf autres « passagers » furent retrouvés sains et saufs dans la soute à charbon, mais une inconnue demeura à propos du sort d’éventuelles autres victimes qui auraient pu être ensevelies sous les 285 tonnes de combustible entreposées dans les cales du bateau.

    Le Sidi Ferruch repartit en effet vers Bougie (actuelle Bejaïa, sur la côte à l’est d’Alger) sans qu’une fouille complète ait pu être effectuée, tandis que les survivants, après avoir été interrogés, étaient refoulés vers Alger d’où ils avaient embarqué. Quatre matelots corses, désignés comme ayant procédé à l’embarquement, furent placés sous mandat de dépôt et des suspects (« marocains », « algériens » ou « européens ») ayant opéré depuis Alger, comme rabatteurs ou organisateurs du trafic, furent recherchés, apparemment sans succès. Hormis la désignation d’un juge d’instruction, les suites judiciaires de l’affaire ne nous sont d’ailleurs pas connues.

    L’écho donné à la « #tragédie_du_Sidi_Ferruch » permit d’apprendre que ces cas de morts en migration n’étaient pas isolés : ainsi, le 9 avril 1926, le vapeur #Anfa, un courrier parti de Casablanca, avait lui aussi été au centre d’une affaire d’embarquements clandestins nécessitant plus d’investigations que le simple #refoulement des « indigènes » découverts à leur arrivée. Alors qu’une douzaine de clandestins cachés dans des canots avaient été débarqués à Tanger, ceux dissimulés à fond de cale ne furent découverts qu’en haute mer. Deux d’entre eux étaient morts par asphyxie. Le timonier dénoncé par les survivants aurait fait des aveux immédiats et se serait suicidé avec son arme personnelle.

    Incidemment, et sans faire état d’une quelconque surprise ou volonté d’enquêter, le commissaire spécial de Marseille rapporta alors à ses supérieurs de la Sûreté générale que trois corps avaient été « immergés » avant l’arrivée dans le port de la cité phocéenne. On imagine avec quelle facilité il pouvait être possible pour les capitaines de navires, véritables « maîtres à bord », de faire disparaître des cadavres de clandestins sans que personne ne s’en inquiète.

    Des victimes sans noms

    Dans ce cas, comme dans celui du Sidi Ferruch, l’identité des victimes ne fut jamais établie : l’absence de papiers suffisait à justifier cet anonymat, sans qu’aucune autre forme d’attestation soit recherchée, y compris auprès des survivants promptement refoulés vers leur port d’embarquement. Selon toute probabilité, les cadavres qui n’avaient pas été immergés faisaient l’objet d’une « inhumation administrative » (enterrement « sous X » dans une fosse commune réservée aux indigents) dans un cimetière de Marseille.

    Il est donc impossible d’établir la moindre estimation du nombre des « morts en Méditerranée » provoqués par l’introduction d’un « #délit_d’embarquement_clandestin » (loi du 30 mai 1923) et de #restrictions_à_la_circulation entre le #Maroc (1922) – puis l’Algérie (1924) – et la métropole. Le « drame du Sidi Ferruch » ne peut cependant être considéré comme un événement isolé, même s’il fut le seul à attirer l’attention de la grande presse. Ainsi, au cours des mois suivants, des militants du secrétariat colonial de la CGTU dénoncèrent la répétition de ces événements : la brochure L’indigénat, code d’esclavage (1928) rappelle plusieurs cas d’Algériens sortis « agonisants » ou de Nord-africains descendus de bateau « dans un état de santé alarmant ». Surtout, elle signale que pour échapper aux contrôles, ces clandestins évitaient les grands ports et pouvaient s’entasser dans de simples voiliers : quatre morts par dénutrition, après 23 jours de voyage, furent ainsi découverts le 25 février 1927, à Port-la-Nouvelle (Aude).

    Dix ans plus tard, Saïd Faci suggérait dans L’Algérie sous l’égide de la France (1936) que les morts à fond de cale étaient bien plus nombreux que les seuls cas recensés : « qu’importe que les indigènes meurent pourvu que les colons algériens aient de la main-d’œuvre à bon marché », écrivait-il, afin de dénoncer les funestes conséquences des restrictions à la libre circulation entre l’Algérie et la métropole.

    Il est vrai qu’avant même que la relative émotion suscitée par les cadavres du Sidi Ferruch ne retombe, les réactions officielles avaient été sans surprise : Octave Depont qui faisait alors figure de principal expert en « émigration nord-africaine » fit ainsi savoir dans la presse que « l’indigène sans papiers devait être renvoyé en Algérie ». L’objectif affiché était « de tarir l’#émigration_clandestine qui, ces derniers temps, a pris un développement redoutable », tout en évitant « les centaines de morts » en mer qu’Octave Depont évoquait sans plus de précisions (Le Petit Versaillais, mai 1926). Son appel à une répression plus sévère fut entendu et les peines relatives à la loi du 30 mai 1923 qui avait défini le délit d’embarquement clandestin furent alourdies (loi du 17 décembre 1926).

    Contourner les #contrôles_migratoires

    Les #contournements des contrôles ne semblent pas avoir diminué dans les années suivantes, même si la plupart des candidats au départ cherchaient à éviter les modes opératoires les plus périlleux, en particulier les embarquements à fond de cale. Un certain nombre de Marocains, passés par Oran sans avoir pu réunir les faux documents et autres autorisations achetées qui auraient pu leur donner l’apparence d’Algériens en règle, devaient cependant s’y résoudre. Des Algériens munis de faux papiers étaient aussi interpellés à Marseille et immédiatement refoulés, mais la plupart de ces migrants clandestins, ou #harragas, bénéficiaient de complicités qui leur permettaient d’échapper aux contrôles à l’arrivée.

    Une fois passée la flambée politico-médiatique suscitée par l’affaire du Sidi Ferruch, la question des trafics de pièces d’identité et des « #embarquements_clandestins » resurgit périodiquement, en fonction notamment des mobilisations en faveur d’un durcissement des contrôles. Cette #politisation rend d’autant plus délicate toute évaluation du poids et des conséquences de « l’émigration clandestine ». Les #refoulements depuis Marseille étaient relativement peu nombreux (de l’ordre de quelques dizaines par mois), mais les capitaines de navire avaient tout intérêt à faire débarquer discrètement les clandestins découverts en mer plutôt qu’à les dénoncer, au risque de devoir prendre en charge leur voyage retour.

    Les plus lucides des policiers reconnaissaient d’ailleurs que le nombre des « clandestins » et les risques qu’ils étaient prêts à encourir dépendaient avant tout de la rigueur de la législation et des contrôles en vigueur. Ces constats furent cependant peu mobilisés au service d’argumentaires en faveur de la liberté de voyage, sinon par les militants anticolonialistes qui voyaient dans ces contrôles et leurs dramatiques conséquences humaines une des déclinaisons de « l’odieux #Code_de_l’indigénat ».

    https://theconversation.com/en-1926-les-entraves-a-la-migration-tuaient-deja-en-mediterranee-16

    #histoire #Méditerranée #migrations #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #morts #décès #mourir_en_mer #France
    #Emmanuel_Blanchard

    ping @isskein @karine4

  • Immigration Enforcement and the Afterlife of the Slave Ship

    Coast Guard techniques for blocking Haitian asylum seekers have their roots in the slave trade. Understanding these connections can help us disentangle immigration policy from white nationalism.

    Around midnight in May 2004, somewhere in the Windward Passage, one of the Haitian asylum seekers trapped on the flight deck of the U.S. Coast Guard’s USCGC Gallatin had had enough.

    He arose and pointed to the moon, whispering in hushed tones. The rest of the Haitians, asleep or pretending to be asleep, initially took little notice. That changed when he began to scream. The cadence of his words became erratic, furious—insurgent. After ripping his shirt into tatters, he gestured wildly at the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) watchstanders on duty.

    I was one of them.

    His eyes fixed upon mine. And he slowly advanced toward my position.

    I stood fast, enraptured by his lone defiance, his desperate rage. Who could blame him? Confinement on this sunbaked, congested, malodorous flight deck would drive anyone crazy—there were nearly 300 people packed together in a living space approximately 65 feet long and 35 feet wide. We had snatched him and his compatriots from their overloaded sailing vessel back in April. They had endured week after week without news about the status of their asylum claims, about what lay in store for them.

    Then I got scared. I considered the distinct possibility that, to this guy, I was no longer me, but a nameless uniform, an avatar of U.S. sovereignty: a body to annihilate, a barrier to freedom. I had rehearsed in my mind how such a contingency might play out. We were armed only with nonlethal weapons—batons and pepper spray. The Haitians outnumbered us 40 to 1. Was I ready? I had never been in a real fight before. Now a few of the Haitian men were standing alert. Were they simply curious? Was this their plan all along? What if the women and children joined them?

    Lucky for me, one of the meanest devils on the watch intervened on my behalf. He charged toward us, stepping upon any Haitians who failed to clear a path. After a brief hand-to-hand struggle, he subdued the would-be rebel, hauled him down to the fantail, and slammed his head against the deck. Blood ran from his face. Some of the Haitians congregated on the edge of the flight deck to spectate. We fastened the guy’s wrists with zip ties and ordered the witnesses to disperse. The tension in his body gradually dissipated.

    After fifteen minutes, the devil leaned down to him. “Are you done? Done making trouble?” His silence signified compliance.

    Soon after, the Haitians were transferred to the custody of the Haitian Coast Guard. When we arrived in the harbor of Port-au-Prince, thick plumes of black smoke rose from the landscape. We were witnessing the aftermath of the CIA-orchestrated February coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the subsequent invasion of the country by U.S. Marines under the auspices of international “peacekeeping.” Haiti was at war.

    None of that mattered. Every request for asylum lodged from our boat had been rejected. Every person returned to Haiti. No exceptions.

    The Gallatin left the harbor. I said goodbye to Port-au-Prince. My first patrol was over.

    Out at sea, I smoked for hours on the fantail, lingering upon my memories of the past months. I tried to imagine how the Haitians would remember their doomed voyage, their detention aboard the Gallatin, their encounters with us—with me. A disquieting intuition repeated in my head: the USCG cutter, the Haitians’ sailing vessel, and European slave ships represented a triad of homologous instances in which people of African descent have suffered involuntary concentration in small spaces upon the Atlantic. I dreaded that I was in closer proximity to the enslavers of the past, and to the cops and jailors of the present, than I ever would be to those Haitians.

    So, that night, with the butt of my last cigarette, I committed to cast my memories of the Haitians overboard. In the depths of some unmarked swath of the Windward Passage, I prayed, no one, including me, would ever find them again.

    In basic training, every recruit is disciplined to imagine how the USCG is like every other branch of the military, save one principle: we exist to save lives, and it is harder to save lives than to take them. I was never a very good sailor, but I took this principle seriously. At least in the USCG, I thought, I could evade the worst cruelties of the new War on Terror.

    Perhaps I should have done more research on the USCG’s undeclared long war against Haitian asylum seekers, in order to appreciate precisely what the oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” would demand of me. This war had long preceded my term of enlistment. It arguably began in 1804, when the United States refused to acknowledge the newly liberated Haiti as a sovereign nation and did everything it could to insulate its slaving society from the shock waves of Haiti’s radical interpretation of universal freedom. But in our present day, it began in earnest with President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12324 of 1981, also called the Haitian Migrant Interdiction Operation (HMIO), which exclusively tasked the USCG to “interdict” Haitian asylum seekers attempting to enter the United States by sea routes on unauthorized sailing vessels. Such people were already beginning to be derogatorily referred to as “boat people,” a term then borrowed (less derogatorily) into Haitian Kreyòl as botpippel.

    The enforcement of the HMIO and its subsequent incarnations lies almost entirely within the jurisdiction of federal police power acting under the authority of the executive branch’s immigration and border enforcement powers. It does not take place between nations at enmity with one another, but between vastly unequal yet allied powers. Its strategic end is to create a kind of naval blockade, a fluid maritime border around Haiti, which remains under ever-present threat of invasion by a coalition of U.S. and foreign military forces.

    Adding to its asymmetry, the “enemies” to be vanquished on the battlefield are also unconventional: they are not agents of a state, but rather noncombatant individuals who are, in one sense or another, simply acting to save their own lives. During their incarceration aboard USCG cutters, they automatically bear the legal status of “economic migrant,” a person whom authorities deem to be fleeing poverty alone and therefore by definition ineligible for asylum. The meaning of this category is defined solely by reference to its dialectical negation, the “political refugee,” a person whom authorities may (or may not) deem to have a legible asylum claim because they are fleeing state persecution on the basis of race, creed, political affiliation, or sexual orientation. These abstractions are historical artifacts of a half-baked, all-encompassing theory of preemptive deterrence: unless USCG patrols are used to place Haiti under a naval blockade, and unless botpippel are invariably denied asylum, the United States will become flooded with criminals and people who have no means of supporting themselves. By 2003 John Ashcroft and the Bush administration upped the ante, decrying botpippel to be vectors of terrorism. On January 11, 2018, President Donald Trump, during efforts to justify ending nearly all immigration and asylum, described Haiti (which he grouped with African nations) as a “shithole country” where, as he asserted several months prior, “all have AIDS.”

    Haiti is now facing another such crisis. Its president, Jovenel Moïse, having already suspended nearly all elected government save himself, refused to step down at the end of his term on February 7, 2021, despite widespread protests that have shuttered the country. Moïse’s administration is currently being propped up by criminal syndicates, but they are slipping his grasp, and kidnapping for money is now so prevalent that people are terrified to leave their homes. So far, the Biden administration’s response has not been encouraging: though it has instructed ICE to temporarily halt deportations to Haiti, naval blockades remain in force, and the U.S. State Department has expressed the opinion that Moïse should remain in office for at least another year, enforcing the sense that Haiti is once again a U.S. client state.

    With regard to the Coast Guard’s longstanding orders to block Haitians seeking asylum, the modality of killing is not straightforward, but it is intentional. It consists of snatching the Haitian enemy from their vessel, forcing them to subsist in a state of bare life, and finally abandoning them in their home country at gunpoint. Of course, many may survive the ordeal and may even attempt another journey. But especially during acute phases of armed conflict and catastrophe, it is just as likely that—whether at the behest of starvation, disease, or violence—a return to Haiti is a death sentence.

    This banal form of murder is analogous to what Ruth Wilson Gilmore offers as her definition of racism in Golden Gulag (2007): “the state sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” Based on the extant documentary record, I estimate that the USCG has interdicted at least 120,000 botpippel since the HMIO of 1981 took effect. Those who fell prey to an untimely demise following deportation died because the United States, though repeatedly responsible for undermining Haitian democracy and economic stability, nonetheless refuses to acknowledge that these actions have made Haiti, for many, mortally unsafe. The true death toll will never be known. Countless botpippel have simply disappeared at sea, plunged into a gigantic watery necropolis.

    Since 2004 U.S. officials have brought their forms of border policing strategies and tactics against Haitians to bear on land-based immigration and refugee policies against non-white asylum seekers. One of the most significant technical innovations of enforcement against Haitians was the realization that by detaining them exclusively within a maritime environment, the United States could summarily classify all of them as economic migrants—whose claims for asylum de facto have no standing—and prevent them from lodging claims as political refugees, which are the only claims with any hope of success. They were thus proactively disabled from advancing a request for asylum in a U.S. federal court, with all claims instead evaluated by an INS-designated official aboard the USCG vessel. The New York Times recently reported that, since late 2009, similar techniques have been adopted by Customs and Border Control agents patrolling sea routes along the California coast, which has resulted in a notable escalation of CBP naval patrols and aerial surveillance of the region. And in fact, the USCG has cooperatively supported these efforts by sharing its infrastructure—ports, cutters, and aircraft—and its personnel with CBP. All of this has been with the aim of making sure that asylum seekers never make it to the United States, whether by land or by sea.

    The Trump administration made the most significant use of this set of innovations to date, insisting that asylum claims must be made from camps on the Mexican side of the U.S. border—and therefore automatically invalid by virtue of being limited to the status of economic migrant. Thus, hundreds of thousands of non-white asylum seekers fleeing material precariousness, yes, but also the threat of violence in the Global South are, and will continue to be, caught in carceral webs composed of ICE/CBP goon squads, ruthless INS officials, and perilous tent cities, not to mention the prison guards employed at one of the numerous semi-secret migrant detention centers operating upon U.S. soil for those few who make it across.

    From the perspective of Haitian immigrants and botpippel, this is nothing new. Thousands of their compatriots have already served time at infamous extrajudicial sites such as the Krome detention center in Miami (1980–present), Guantanamo Bay (1991–93), and, most often, the flight decks of USCG cutters. They know that the USCG has long scoured the Windward Passage for Haitians in particular, just as ICE/CBP goon squads now patrol U.S. deserts, highways, and city streets for the undocumented. And they know that Trump’s fantasy of building a “Great Wall” on the U.S.–Mexico border is not so farfetched, because the USCG continues to enforce a maritime one around Haiti.

    The Biden administration has inherited this war and its prisoners, with thousands remaining stuck in legal limbo while hoping—in most cases, without hope—that their asylum claims will advance. Opening alternative paths to citizenship and declaring an indefinite moratorium on deportations would serve as foundations for more sweeping reforms in the future. But the core challenge in this political moment is to envision nothing less than the total decriminalization and demilitarization of immigration law enforcement.

    Botpippel are not the first undocumented people of African descent to have been policed by U.S. naval forces. The legal architecture through which the USCG legitimates the indefinite detention and expulsion of Haitian asylum seekers reaches back to U.S. efforts to suppress the African slave trade, outlawed by Congress in 1807, though domestic slaveholding would continue, and indeed its trade would be not only safeguarded but bolstered by this act.

    This marked a decisive turning point in the history of maritime policing vis-à-vis immigration. Per the Slave Trade Acts of 1794 and 1800, the United States already claimed jurisdiction over U.S. citizens and U.S. vessels engaged in the slave trade within U.S. territorial borders (contemporaneously understood as extending three nautical miles into the ocean). By 1808, however, the United States sought to extend its jurisdiction over the sea itself. Slaver vessels operating around “any river, port, bay, or harbor . . . within the jurisdictional limits of the United States” as well as “on the high seas” were deemed illegal and subject to seizure without compensation. The actual physical distance from U.S. soil that these terms referred to was left purposefully vague. To board a given vessel, a Revenue Cutter captain only had to suspect, rather than conclusively determine, that that vessel eventually intended to offload “international” (i.e., non-native) enslaved people into the United States. The 1819 iteration of the law further stipulated that U.S. jurisdiction included “Africa, or elsewhere.” Hence, in theory, after 1819, the scope of U.S. maritime police operations was simply every maritime space on the globe.

    Revenue Cutter Service captains turned the lack of any description in the 1808 law or its successive iterations about what should be done with temporarily masterless slaves into an advantage. They did what they would have done to any fugitive Black person at the time: indefinitely detain them until higher authorities determined their status, and thereby foreclose the possibility of local Black people conspiring to shuttle them to freedom. During confinement, captured Africans were compelled to perform labor as if they were slaves. For instance, those captured from the Spanish-flagged Antelope (1820) spent seven years toiling at a military fort in Savannah, Georgia, as well as on the local U.S. marshal’s plantation. As wards of the state, they were human only insofar as U.S. officials had a duty to force them to remain alive. Of those “rescued” from the Antelope, 120 ultimately died in captivity and 2 went missing. Following litigation, 39 survivors were sold to U.S. slaveowners to compensate Spanish and Portuguese claimants who had stakes in the Antelope and her enslaved cargo. Per the designs of the American Colonization Society, the remaining 120 Africans were freed upon condition that they be immediately deported to New Georgia, Liberia.

    This anti-Black martial abolitionism was therefore a project framed around the unification of two countervailing tendencies. While white planters consistently pushed to extend racial slavery into the southern and western frontiers, white northern financiers and abolitionists were in favor of creating the most propitious conditions for the expansion of free white settlements throughout America’s urban and rural milieus. Black people were deemed unfit for freedom not only because of their supposed inborn asocial traits, but because their presence imperiled the possibility for white freedom. To actualize Thomas Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty,” the United States required immigration policies that foreshortened Black peoples’ capacities for social reproduction and thereby re-whitened America.

    This political aim was later extended in legislation passed on February 19, 1862, which authorized President Abraham Lincoln—who intended to solve the contradictions that led to the Civil War by sending every Black person in America back to Africa—to use U.S. naval forces to capture, detain, and deport undocumented people of East Asian/Chinese descent (“coolies”) while at sea. Henceforth, “the free and voluntary emigration of any Chinese subject” to the U.S. was proscribed unless a ship captain possessed documents certified by a consular agent residing at the foreign port of departure. At the time, the principal means for Chinese emigrants to obtain authorization would have been at behest of some corporation seeking expendable, non-white laborers contractually bound to work to death in mines and on railroads on the western frontiers—Native American lands stolen through imperialist warfare. White settlers presupposed that these Asians’ residency was provisional and temporary—and then Congress codified that principle into law in 1870, decreeing that every person of East Asian/Chinese descent, anywhere in the world, was ineligible for U.S. citizenship.

    Twelve years later, An Act to Regulate Immigration (1882) played upon the notion that non-white immigration caused public disorder. Through the use of color-blind legal language, Section 2 of this law specified that the United States must only accept immigrants who were conclusively not “convict[s], lunatic[s], idiot[s], or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The burden of proof lay on non-white immigrants to prove how their racial backgrounds were not already prima facie evidence for these conditions. Section 4 also stipulated that “all foreign convicts except those convicted of political offenses, upon arrival, shall be sent back to the nations to which they belong and from whence they came.” By which means a non-white person could demonstrate the “political” character of a given conviction were cleverly left undefined.

    It was not a giant leap of imagination for the United States to apply these precedents to the maritime policing of Haitian asylum seekers in the 1980s. Nor should we be surprised that the logic of anti-Black martial abolitionism shapes present-day U.S. immigration policy.

    Political philosopher Peter Hallward estimates that paramilitary death squads executed at least a thousand supporters of Lavalas, President Aristide’s party, in the weeks following Aristide’s exile from Haiti on February 29, 2004. The first kanntè (Haitian sailing vessel) the Gallatin sighted one morning in early April had likely departed shortly thereafter.

    The first people from our ship that the Haitians met were members of the boarding team, armed with pistols, M-16s, shotguns, and zip ties. Their goal was to compel the hundred or so aboard the kanntè to surrender their vessel and allow us to deposit them on the flight deck of our ship. Negotiations can take hours. It is not uncommon for some to jump overboard, rather than allow boarding to occur uninhibited. If immediate acquiescence is not obtained, we will maneuver ourselves such that any further movement would cause the small boat to “ram” the Gallatin—an attack on a U.S. military vessel.

    On the Gallatin, we waited for uptake, outfitted with facemasks and rubber gloves. One at a time, we aided the Haitian adults to make the final step from the small boat to the deck of the cutter. We frisked them for weapons and then marched them to the fantail to undergo initial processing. Most of them appeared exhausted and confused—but compliant. Some may have already been in fear for their lives. One night aboard the USCGC Dallas, which hovered in Port-au-Prince Bay as a deportation coordination outpost and as a temporary detention site for Haitians awaiting immediate transfer to Haitian Coast Guard authorities, my friend and his shipmates asked their Kreyòl interpreter how he managed to obtain compliance from the botpippel. “I tell them you will hurt or kill them if they do not obey,” he joked, “so, of course, they listen.”

    Boarding all the Haitians took from midday until midnight. One of the last ones I helped aboard, a man dressed in a suit two sizes too large, looked into my eyes and smiled. He gently wept, clasped my hand tightly, and embraced me. I quickly pushed him off and pointed to the processing station at the fantail, leading him by the wrist to join the others. He stopped crying.

    Three things happened at the processing station. First, Haitians deposited the last of their belongings with the interpreter, ostensibly for safekeeping. Who knows if anyone got their things back. Second, a Kreyòl translator and one of the officers gave them a cursory interview about their asylum claims, all the while surrounded by armed sentries, as well as other Haitians who might pass that intelligence onto narcotics smugglers, paramilitary gangs, or state officials back in Haiti. Lastly, they received a rapid, half-assed medical examination—conducted in English. So long as they nodded, or remained silent, they passed each test and were shuffled up to the flight deck.

    We retired for the night after the boarding team set fire to the kanntè as a hazard to navigation. The Haitians probably didn’t know that this was the reason we unceremoniously torched their last hope for escape before their very eyes.

    About a week later, we found another kanntè packed with around seventy Haitians and repeated the process. Another USCG cutter transferred a hundred more over to the Gallatin. Our flight deck was reaching full capacity.

    We arrived at one kanntè too late. It had capsized. Pieces of the shattered mast and little bits of clothing and rubbish were floating around the hull. No survivors. How long had it been? Sharks were spotted circling at a short depth below the vessel.

    The Gallatin’s commanders emphasized that our mission was, at its core, humanitarian in nature. We were duty-bound to provide freshwater, food, and critical medical care. During their time aboard, Haitians would be treated as detainees and were not to be treated, or referred to, as prisoners. The use of force was circumscribed within clear rules of engagement. The Haitians were not in any way to be harmed or killed unless they directly threatened the ship or its sailors. Unnecessary violence against them could precipitate an internal review, solicit undue international criticism, and imperil the deportationist efficiency of INS officials. We were told that our batons and pepper spray were precautionary, primarily symbolic.

    It sounded like all I had to do was stand there and not screw anything up.

    Over the course of several watches, I concluded that, in fact, our job was also to relocate several crucial features of the abysmal living conditions that obtained on the kanntè onto the Gallatin’s flight deck. Though the flight deck was 80 feet by 43 feet, we blocked the edges to facilitate the crew’s movement and to create a buffer between us and the Haitians. Taking this into account, their living space was closer to 65 feet by 35 feet. For a prison population of 300 Haitians, each individual would have had only 7 feet 7 inches square to lie down and stand up. On the diagram of the eighteenth-century British slaver Brooks, the enslaved were each allocated approximately 6 feet 10 inches square, scarcely less than on the Gallatin. (Historian Marcus Rediker thinks that the Brooks diagram probably overstates the amount of space the enslaved were given.)

    Although some cutters will drape tarps over the flight deck to shield the Haitians from the unmediated effects of the sun, the Gallatin provided no such shelter. We permitted them to shower, once, in saltwater, without soap. The stench on the flight deck took on a sweet, fetid tinge.

    The only place they could go to achieve a modicum of solitude and to escape the stench was the makeshift metal toilet on the fantail. (On slave ships, solitude was found by secreting away to a hidden compartment or small boat to die alone; the “necessary tubs” that held human excrement were contained in the slave holds below deck.) They were permitted to use the toilet one at a time in the case of adults, and two at a time in the case of children and the elderly. For what was supposed to be no longer than five minutes, they had an opportunity to stretch, relax, and breathe fresh sea air. Nevertheless, these moments of respite took place under observation by the watchstander stationed at the toilet, not to mention the numerous Haitian onlookers at the rear of the flight deck.

    Despite our commanders’ reticence on the matter, the ever-present fear of revolt hovered underneath the surface of our standing orders. We were to ensure order and discipline through counterinsurgency protocols and techniques of incarceration that one might find in any U.S. prison. The military imperative aboard the Gallatin was to produce a sense of radical uncertainty and temporal disorientation in the Haitians, such that they maintain hope for an asylum claim that had already been rejected.

    In this context, there were four overlapping components to the security watch.

    The first component of the ship’s securitization was constant surveillance. We were not supposed to take our eyes off the Haitians for one moment. During the watch, we would regularly survey the flight deck for any signs of general unrest, conspiracy, or organized protest. Any minor infraction could later contribute to the eruption of a larger riot, and thus needed to be quickly identified and neutralized. We also had to observe their behavior for indications that one of them intended to jump overboard or harm another Haitian. All that said, we found a used condom one day. Surveillance is never total.

    The second was the limitation we placed on communication. We shrouded all USCG practices in a fog of secrecy. Conversing with the Haitians through anything other than hand signals and basic verbal commands was forbidden; physical contact was kept at bare minimum. Nonofficial speech among the watch was proscribed. Watchstanders were stripped of their identity, save their uniform, from which our nametags were removed. It was critical that botpippel forever be unable to identify us.

    Secrecy preemptively disabled the Haitians from collectively piecing together fragments of information about where our vessel had been, where it was now, and where it was going. Officially, the concern was that they might exploit the situation to gather intelligence about our patrol routes and pass this information to human or narcotics smugglers. We militated against their mapping out how the ship operated, its layout and complement, where living spaces and the armory were located, and so on. These were standard tactics aboard slaver vessels. As freed slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano observed, “When the ship we were in had got in all her cargo . . . we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel.”

    On the Gallatin, the command also strove to maintain strict control over the narrative. They blocked sailors’ access to the open Internet and censored letters from home that contained news of global or domestic politics (and even just bad personal news). Knowledge of whether a particular asylum claim had failed or succeeded was hidden from all. A watchstander harboring political solidarity with—as opposed to mere empathy and pity for—the Haitians might compromise operational capacities, good judgment, and core loyalty to the USCG.

    Our third securitization strategy was to produce false knowledge of the future. The Haitians were led to believe that they were merely waiting aboard the ship because their asylum claims were still being vigorously debated by diplomatic entities in Washington. Their continued compliance was predicated on this differential of knowledge. They could not realize that they were moving in circles, being returned slowly to Haiti. If they lost all hope, we presumed they would eventually resist their intolerable conditions through violent means.

    Hence, our fourth securitization measure: USCG personnel were permitted to inflict several limited forms of physical and symbolic violence against the Haitians, not only in response to perceived noncompliance, but also as a means of averting the need to inflict even greater violence in the future.

    If it were not classified as a matter of national security, we might have a better grasp of how many times such instances occur aboard USCG vessels. I open this essay with a story of how we subdued and punished one person for resisting the rules. But it is known that punishment is sometimes inflicted on entire groups. A telling example took place on January 30, 1989, when the USCG captured the Dieu Devant with 147 Haitians aboard. One of them, Fitzroy Joseph, later reported in congressional hearings that, after they expressed a fear of being killed if returned to Haiti, USCG personnel “began wrestling with the Haitians and hitting their hands with their flashlights.” This was followed by threats to release pepper spray. Marie Julie Pierre, Joseph’s wife, corroborated his testimony, adding:

    [We were] asked at once if we feared returning to Haiti and everyone said yes we did. We said ‘down with Avril, up with Bush.’ We were threatened with tear gas but they didn’t use it. Many people were crying because they were so afraid. [Ti Jak] was hit by the officers because he didn’t want to go back. They handcuffed him. The Coast Guard grabbed others by the neck and forced them to go to the biggest boat. My older brother was also hit and treated like a chicken as they pulled him by the neck.

    Counterintuitively, our nonlethal weapons functioned as more efficient instruments of counterinsurgency than lethal weapons. Brandishing firearms might exacerbate an already tense situation in which the Haitians outnumbered the entire ship’s complement. It could also provide an opportunity for the Haitians to seize and turn our own guns against us (or one another). In contrast, losing a baton and a can of pepper spray represented a relatively minor threat to the ship’s overall security. In the event of an actual riot, the command could always mobilize armed reinforcements. From the perspective of the command, then, the first responders on watch were, to some extent, expendable. Nevertheless, sentries bearing firearms were on deck when we approached Haiti and prepared for final deportation. That is, the precise moment the Haitians realized their fate.

    Like the enslaved Africans captured by the Revenue Cutter Service, botpippel were human to us only insofar as we had to compel them, through the threat or actuality of violence, to remain alive. The Haitians ate our tasteless food and drank our freshwater—otherwise they would starve, or we might beat them for going on a hunger strike. They tended to remain silent and immobile day and night—otherwise they would invite acts of exemplary punishment upon themselves. The practices of confinement on the Gallatin represent a variant of what historian Stephanie Smallwood describes as a kind of “scientific empiricism” that developed aboard slave ships, which “prob[ed] the limits to which it is possible to discipline the body without extinguishing the life within.” Just as contemporary slavers used force to conserve human commodities for sale, so does the USCG use force to produce nominally healthy economic migrants to exchange with Haitian authorities.

    The rational utilization of limited forms of exemplary violence was an integral aspect of this carceral science. Rediker shows how slaver captains understood violence along a continuum that ranged from acceptably severe to unacceptably cruel. Whereas severity was the grounds of proper discipline as such, an act was cruel only if it led “to catastrophic results [and] sparked reactions such as mutiny by sailors or insurrection by slaves.” In turn, minor acts of kindness, such as dispensing better food or allowing slightly more free time to move above deck, were conditioned by these security imperatives. Furthermore, they exerted no appreciable change to the eventuality that the person would be sold to a slaveowner, for kindness was a self-aggrandizing ritual performance of authority that intended to lay bare the crucial imbalance of power relations at hand. This was, Rediker maintains, “as close as the owners ever came to admitting that terror was essential to running a slave ship.”

    The USCG’s undeclared long war against Haitian asylum seekers is but one front of a much longer war against people of African descent in the Americas. The entangled histories of the African slave trade and anti-Black martial abolitionism reveal how this war intimately shaped the foundations and racist intentions that underlay modern U.S. immigration and refugee policy writ large. And the Gallatin, her sailors, and the Haitians who were trapped on the flight deck, are, in some small way, now a part of this history, too.

    The Biden administration has the power to decisively end this war—indeed, every war against non-white asylum seekers. Until then, botpippel will continue to suffer the slave ships that survive into the present.

    https://bostonreview.net/race/ryan-fontanilla-immigration-enforcement-and-afterlife-slave-ship

    #esclavage #héritage #migrations #contrôles_migratoires #Haïti #gardes-côtes #nationalisme_blanc #USA #Etats-Unis #migrations #frontières #asile #réfugiés #USCG #Haitian_Migrant_Interdiction_Operation (#HMIO) #botpippel #boat_people

    #modèle_australien #pacific_solution

    ping @karine4 @isskein @reka

    • Ce décret de #Reagan mentionné dans l’article rappelle farouchement la loi d’#excision_territoriale australienne :

      But in our present day, it began in earnest with President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12324 of 1981, also called the Haitian Migrant Interdiction Operation (HMIO), which exclusively tasked the USCG to “interdict” Haitian asylum seekers attempting to enter the United States by sea routes on unauthorized sailing vessels. Such people were already beginning to be derogatorily referred to as “boat people,” a term then borrowed (less derogatorily) into Haitian Kreyòl as botpippel.

      Excision territoriale australienne :


      https://seenthis.net/messages/416996

      –—

      Citation tirée du livre de McAdam et Chong : « Refugees : why seeking asylum is legal and Australia’s policies are not » (p.3)

      “Successive governments (aided by much of the media) have exploited public anxieties about border security to create a rhetorical - and, ultimately, legislative - divide between the rights of so-called ’genuine’ refugees, resettled in Australia from camps and settlements abroad, and those arriving spontaneously in Australia by boat.”

  • Budget européen pour la migration : plus de contrôles aux frontières, moins de respect pour les droits humains

    Le 17 juillet 2020, le Conseil européen examinera le #cadre_financier_pluriannuel (#CFP) pour la période #2021-2027. À cette occasion, les dirigeants de l’UE discuteront des aspects tant internes qu’externes du budget alloué aux migrations et à l’#asile.

    En l’état actuel, la #Commission_européenne propose une #enveloppe_budgétaire totale de 40,62 milliards d’euros pour les programmes portant sur la migration et l’asile, répartis comme suit : 31,12 milliards d’euros pour la dimension interne et environ 10 milliards d’euros pour la dimension externe. Il s’agit d’une augmentation de 441% en valeur monétaire par rapport à la proposition faite en 2014 pour le budget 2014-2020 et d’une augmentation de 78% par rapport à la révision budgétaire de 2015 pour ce même budget.

    Une réalité déguisée

    Est-ce une bonne nouvelle qui permettra d’assurer dignement le bien-être de milliers de migrant.e.s et de réfugié.e.s actuellement abandonné.e.s à la rue ou bloqué.e.s dans des centres d’accueil surpeuplés de certains pays européens ? En réalité, cette augmentation est principalement destinée à renforcer l’#approche_sécuritaire : dans la proposition actuelle, environ 75% du budget de l’UE consacré à la migration et à l’asile serait alloué aux #retours, à la #gestion_des_frontières et à l’#externalisation des contrôles. Ceci s’effectue au détriment des programmes d’asile et d’#intégration dans les États membres ; programmes qui se voient attribuer 25% du budget global.

    Le budget 2014 ne comprenait pas de dimension extérieure. Cette variable n’a été introduite qu’en 2015 avec la création du #Fonds_fiduciaire_de_l’UE_pour_l’Afrique (4,7 milliards d’euros) et une enveloppe financière destinée à soutenir la mise en œuvre de la #déclaration_UE-Turquie de mars 2016 (6 milliards d’euros), qui a été tant décriée. Ces deux lignes budgétaires s’inscrivent dans la dangereuse logique de #conditionnalité entre migration et #développement : l’#aide_au_développement est liée à l’acceptation, par les pays tiers concernés, de #contrôles_migratoires ou d’autres tâches liées aux migrations. En outre, au moins 10% du budget prévu pour l’Instrument de voisinage, de développement et de coopération internationale (#NDICI) est réservé pour des projets de gestion des migrations dans les pays d’origine et de transit. Ces projets ont rarement un rapport avec les activités de développement.

    Au-delà des chiffres, des violations des #droits_humains

    L’augmentation inquiétante de la dimension sécuritaire du budget de l’UE correspond, sur le terrain, à une hausse des violations des #droits_fondamentaux. Par exemple, plus les fonds alloués aux « #gardes-côtes_libyens » sont importants, plus on observe de #refoulements sur la route de la Méditerranée centrale. Depuis 2014, le nombre de refoulements vers la #Libye s’élève à 62 474 personnes, soit plus de 60 000 personnes qui ont tenté d’échapper à des violences bien documentées en Libye et qui ont mis leur vie en danger mais ont été ramenées dans des centres de détention indignes, indirectement financés par l’UE.

    En #Turquie, autre partenaire à long terme de l’UE en matière d’externalisation des contrôles, les autorités n’hésitent pas à jouer avec la vie des migrant.e.s et des réfugié.e.s, en ouvrant et en fermant les frontières, pour négocier le versement de fonds, comme en témoigne l’exemple récent à la frontière gréco-turque.

    Un budget opaque

    « EuroMed Droits s’inquiète de l’#opacité des allocations de fonds dans le budget courant et demande à l’Union européenne de garantir des mécanismes de responsabilité et de transparence sur l’utilisation des fonds, en particulier lorsqu’il s’agit de pays où la corruption est endémique et qui violent régulièrement les droits des personnes migrantes et réfugiées, mais aussi les droits de leurs propres citoyen.ne.s », a déclaré Wadih Al-Asmar, président d’EuroMed Droits.

    « Alors que les dirigeants européens se réunissent à Bruxelles pour discuter du prochain cadre financier pluriannuel, EuroMed Droits demande qu’une approche plus humaine et basée sur les droits soit adoptée envers les migrant.e.s et les réfugié.e.s, afin que les appels à l’empathie et à l’action résolue de la Présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen ne restent pas lettre morte ».

    https://euromedrights.org/fr/publication/budget-europeen-pour-la-migration-plus-de-controles-aux-frontieres-mo


    https://twitter.com/EuroMedRights/status/1283759540740096001

    #budget #migrations #EU #UE #Union_européenne #frontières #Fonds_fiduciaire_pour_l’Afrique #Fonds_fiduciaire #sécurité #réfugiés #accord_UE-Turquie #chiffres #infographie #renvois #expulsions #Neighbourhood_Development_and_International_Cooperation_Instrument

    Ajouté à la métaliste sur la #conditionnalité_de_l'aide_au_développement :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/733358#message768701

    Et à la métaliste sur l’externalisation des contrôles frontaliers :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/731749#message765319

    ping @karine4 @rhoumour @reka @_kg_

  • Border pre-screening centres part of new EU migration pact

    The European Commission’s long-awaited and long-delayed pact on migration will include new asylum centres along the outer rim of the European Union, EUobserver has been told.

    The idea is part of a German proposal, floated last year, that seeks to rapidly pre-screen asylum seekers before they enter European Union territory.

    Michael Spindelegger, director-general of the Vienna-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) told EUobserver on Thursday (9 July) that the European Commission had in fact decided to include it into their upcoming migration pact.

    “I got some information that this will be part of these proposals from the European Commission. So this is what I can tell you. I think this really is something that could bring some movement in the whole debate,” he said.

    Spindelegger was Austria’s minister of foreign affairs and finance minister before taking over the ICMPD in 2016, where he has been outspoken in favour of such centres as a means to unblock disagreements among member states on the overhaul of the future EU-wide asylum system.

    The German non-paper published in November 2019 proposed a mandatory initial assessment of asylum applications at the external border.

    The idea is to prevent irregular and economic migrants from adding to the administrative bottlenecks of bona-fide asylum seekers and refugees.

    “Manifestly unfounded or inadmissible applications shall be denied immediately at the external border, and the applicant must not be allowed to enter the EU,” stated the paper.

    EUobserver understands the new pact may also include a three-tiered approach.

    Abusive claims would be immediately dismissed and returned, those clearly in the need for protection would be relocated to an EU state, while the remainder would end up in some sort of facility.

    Spindelegger concedes the idea has its detractors - noting it will be also be tricky to find the legal framework to support it.

    “To give people, within some days, the right expectation is a good thing - so this is more or less a surprise that the European Commission took this initiative, because there are also some people who are totally against this,” he said.
    EU ’hotspots’ in Greece

    Among those is Oxfam International, an NGO that says people may end up in similar circumstances currently found in the so-called hotspots on the Greek islands.

    “We are very concerned that the Greek law and the hotspots on the islands are going to be the blueprint for the new asylum and migration pact and we have seen them failed in every criteria,” said Oxfam International’s Raphael Shilhav, an expert on migration.

    The hotspots were initially touted as a solution by the European Commission to facilitate and expedite asylum claims of people seeking international protection, who had disembarked from Turkey to the Greek islands.

    The zones on the islands quickly turned into overcrowded camps where people, including women and children, are forced to live amid filth and violence.

    Shilvav said some people at the hotspots who deserved asylum ended up falling through the cracks, noting new Greek laws effectively bar many people who do not have legal support from appealing an asylum rejection.

    EUobserver has previously spoken to one asylum seeker from the Congo who had spent almost three years living in a tent with others at the hotspot in Moria on Lesbos island.

    The new pact is a cornerstone policy of the Von der Leyen Commission and follows years of bickering among member states who failed to agree on a previous proposal to overhaul the existing EU-wide asylum rules.

    “Over the past few years, many member states simply refused to find a solution,” Germany’s interior minister Horst Seehofer said ahead of the current German EU presidency’s first debate on home affairs issues.

    The commission has so far refused to release any specific details of the plan - which has been delayed until September, following the eruption of the pandemic and on-going debates over the EU’s next long-term budget.

    “This proposal will be there to protect and defend the right to asylum and that includes the possibility to apply for asylum, that is a right for everybody to do so,” EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told MEPs earlier this week.

    For its part, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says the new pact needs to be common and workable.

    “This means establishing fair and fast asylum procedures to quickly determine who needs international protection and who does not,” a UNHCR spokeswoman said, in an emailed statement.

    She also noted that some 85 percent of the world’s refugees are currently hosted in neighbouring and developing countries and that more funds are needed for humanitarian and development support.

    https://euobserver.com/migration/148902
    #migration_pact #pacte_migratoire #Europe #identification #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #pré-identification #centres_d'identification #hotspots #Grèce #contrôles_migratoires #contrôles_frontaliers #externalisation #EU #UE #frontières_extérieures #relocalisation #renvois #expulsions

    ping @isskein @karine4

  • Studie “Das Smartphone, bitte! Digitalisierung von Migrationskontrolle in Deutschland und Europa”

    27. December 2019 by Daniela Turß

    Handydatenauswertung bei Geflüchteten ist teuer, unzuverlässig und gefährlich.

    Cover der Studie „Das Smartphone, bitte! Digitalisierung von Migrationskontrolle in Deutschland und Europa“

    Die Studie „Das Smartphone, bitte! Digitalisierung von Migrationskontrolle in Deutschland und Europa“ befasst sich mit der im Jahr 2017 eingeführten Analyse elektronischer Datenträger durch das BAMF. Wenn eine asylsuchende Person weder Pass noch Passersatzdokument vorweisen kann, ist die Behörde dazu berechtigt, ihr Smartphone auszuwerten, um Hinweise auf Identität und Herkunft zu erhalten. Diese Praxis verletzt das Grundrecht auf Vertraulichkeit und Integrität informationstechnischer Systeme von zigtausenden Menschen – für wenig aussagekräftige Ergebnisse.

    Seit der Einführung des Verfahrens im Jahr 2017 hat das BAMF hochgerechnet etwa 20.000 Mobiltelefone von Asylsuchenden ausgelesen und über 11 Millionen Euro in dieses Verfahren investiert. Im Zeitraum Januar 2018 bis Juni 2019 scheiterte das Auslesen in etwa einem Viertel der Fälle bereits an technischen Problemen. Nur in 1-2 % der verwertbaren Auswertungen fanden sich Widersprüche zu den Angaben, die die Asylsuchenden selbst in ihren Befragungen gemacht hatten.

    Für die Studie wertete die Journalistin Anna Biselli und die Juristin Lea Beckmann einen umfangreichen Quellenbestand aus, darunter Ergebnisberichte von Datenträgerauswertungen, Asylakten, interne Dienstanweisungen, Handbücher und Schulungsunterlagen des BAMF und Dokumente aus dem Gesetzgebungsverfahren. Zudem führten die Autorinnen Hintergrundgespräche mit Geflüchteten, Anwält*innen und Rechtswissenschaftler*innen, Verfahrensberatungsstellen und Menschenrechtsorganisationen in Deutschland und anderen Ländern Europas.

    https://freiheitsrechte.org/studie-handydatenauswertung

    –-> Studie: https://freiheitsrechte.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/GFF-Studie_Digitalisierung-von-Migrationskontrolle.pdf

    #migration #smartphone #Allemagne #BAMF #Europe #identité #numérisation #contrôle #étude

  • Why Spain is a Window into the E.U. Migration Control Industry

    Spain’s migration control policies in North Africa dating back over a decade are now replicated across the E.U. Gonzalo Fanjul outlines PorCausa’s investigation into Spain’s migration control industry and its warning signs for the rest of Europe.

    There was a problem and we fixed it.” For laconic President José María Aznar, these words were quite the political statement. The then Spanish president was speaking in July 1996, after 103 Sub-Saharan migrants who had reached Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, were drugged, handcuffed and taken to four African countries by military aircraft.

    President Aznar lay the moral and political foundations of a system based on the securitization, externalization and, increasingly, the privatization of border management. This system was consolidated by subsequent Spanish governments and later extended to the rest of the European Union, setting the grounds for a thriving business: the industry of migration control.

    Between 2001 and 2010, long before Europe faced the so-called “refugee crisis,” Spain built two walls in its North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, signed combined development and repatriation agreements with nine African countries, passed two major pieces of legislation on migration, and fostered inter-regional migration initiatives such as the Rabat Process. Spain also designed and established the Integral System of External Surveillance, to this day one of the most sophisticated border surveillance mechanisms in the world.

    The ultimate purpose of these efforts was clear: to deter irregular migration, humanely if possible, but at any cost if necessary.

    Spain was the first European country to utilize a full array of control and cooperation instruments in countries along the migration route to Europe. The system proved effective during the “cayuco crisis” in 2005 and 2006. Following a seven-fold increase in the number of arrivals from West Africa to the Canary Islands by boat, Spain made agreements with several West African countries to block the route, forcing migrants to take the even riskier Sahel passage.

    Although the E.U. questioned the humanitarian consequences of these deals at the time, less than a decade later officials across the continent have replicated large parts of the Spanish system, including the E.U. Emergency Trust Fund for Africa and agreements between the Italian and the Libyan governments.

    Today, 2005 seems like different world. That year, the E.U. adopted its Global Approach on Migration and Mobility, which balanced the “prevention of irregular migration and trafficking” with promising language on the “fostering of well-managed migration” and the “maximization” of its development impact.

    Since then, the combined effect of the Great Recession – an institutional crisis – and the increased arrival of refugees has diluted reformist efforts in Europe. Migration policies are being defined by ideological nationalism and economic protectionism. Many politicians in Europe are electorally profiting from these trends. The case of Spain also illustrates that the system is ripe for financial profit.

    For over a year, Spanish investigative journalism organization porCausa mapped the industry of migration control in Spain. We detailed the ecosystem of actors and interests facilitating the industry, whose operations rely almost exclusively on public funding. A myriad private contractors and civil society organizations operate in four sectors: border protection and surveillance; detention and expulsion of irregular migrants; reception and integration of migrants; and externalization of migration control through agreements with private organisations and public institutions in third countries.

    We began by focusing on securitization and border management. We found that between 2002 and 2017 Spain allocated at least 610 million euros ($720 million) of public funding through 943 contracts related to the deterrence, detention and expulsion of migrants. Our analysis reached two striking conclusions and one question for future research.

    Firstly, we discovered the major role that the E.U. plays in Spain’s migration control industry. Just over 70 percent of the 610 million euros came from different European funds, such as those related to External Borders, Return and Internal Security, as well as the E.U. border agency Frontex. Thus, Spanish public spending is determined by the policy priorities established by E.U. institutions and member states. Those E.U. institutions have since diligently replicated the Spanish approach. With the E.U. now driving these policies forward, the approach is likely to be replicated in other European countries.

    Secondly, our data highlights how resources are concentrated in the hands of a few businesses. Ten out of the 350 companies included in our database received over half of the 610 million euros. These companies have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the Spanish government in other sectors such as defence, construction and communications, and are now gaining a privileged role in the highly sensitive areas of border surveillance and migration control.

    Our research also surfaced a troubling question that has shaped the second phase of our inquiry: to what extent are these companies influencing Spanish migration policy? The capture of rules and institutions by elites in an economic system has been documented in sectors such as defence, taxation or pharmaceuticals. That this could also be happening to borders and migration policy should alarm public opinion and regulators. For example, the key role played by private technology companies in the design and implementation of Spain’s Integral System of External Surveillance demonstrates the need for further investigation.

    Spain’s industry of migration control may be the prototype of a growing global phenomenon. Migration policies have been taken over by border deterrence goals and narratives. Meanwhile, border control is increasingly dependent on the technology and management of private companies. As E.U.-level priorities intersect with those of the highly-concentrated – and possibly politically influential – migration control industry, Europe risks being trapped in a political and budgetary vicious circle based on the premise of migration-as-a-problem, complicating any future reform efforts towards a more open migration system.

    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/community/2018/05/21/why-spain-is-a-window-into-the-e-u-migration-control-industry
    #Afrique_du_Nord #externalisation #modèle_espagnol #migrations #contrôles_migratoires #asile #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #asile #réfugiés #histoire

  • #métaliste (qui va être un grand chantier, car il y a plein d’information sur seenthis, qu’il faudrait réorganiser) sur :
    #externalisation #contrôles_frontaliers #frontières #migrations #réfugiés

    Des liens vers des articles généraux sur l’externalisation des frontières de la part de l’ #UE (#EU) :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/569305
    https://seenthis.net/messages/390549
    https://seenthis.net/messages/320101

    Ici une tentative (très mal réussie, car évidement, la divergence entre pratiques et les discours à un moment donné, ça se voit !) de l’UE de faire une brochure pour déconstruire les mythes autour de la migration...
    La question de l’externalisation y est abordée dans différentes parties de la brochure :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/765967

    Petit chapitre/encadré sur l’externalisation des frontières dans l’ouvrage "(Dé)passer la frontière" :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/769367

    Les origines de l’externalisation des contrôles frontaliers (maritimes) : accord #USA-#Haïti de #1981 :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/768694

    L’externalisation des politiques européennes en matière de migration
    https://seenthis.net/messages/787450

    "#Sous-traitance" de la #politique_migratoire en Afrique : l’Europe a-t-elle les mains propres ?
    https://seenthis.net/messages/789048

    Partners in crime ? The impacts of Europe’s outsourced migration controls on peace, stability and rights :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/794636
    #paix #stabilité #droits #Libye #Niger #Turquie

    Proceedings of the conference “Externalisation of borders : detention practices and denial of the right to asylum”
    https://seenthis.net/messages/880193

    Brochure sur l’externalisation des frontières (passamontagna)
    https://seenthis.net/messages/952016

  • ‘The Route is Shut’: Eritreans Trapped by Egypt’s Smuggling Crackdown

    Since Egyptian authorities cracked down on people smuggling last year, the Eritrean population in Cairo has swelled. As the E.U. heaps praise on Egypt’s migration control measures, Eric Reidy examines their consequences for a vulnerable community.

    In comparison, around 11,000 of the more than 180,000 people who made the journey to Italy last year set out from Egypt. Following a crackdown on clandestine migration by Egyptian authorities this year, that number has dropped to fewer than 1,000.

    Last September, an estimated 300 people drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Alexandria, making it one of the biggest single tragedies in a year with a record-breaking 5,143 migrant and refugee deaths in the Mediterranean. The majority of the victims were Egyptians, and the incident galvanized support for a crackdown on people smuggling in Egypt.

    https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/08/01/the-route-is-shut-eritreans-trapped-by-egypts-smuggling-crackdown

    #réfugiés #asile #migrations #réfugiés_érythréens #Egypte #passeurs #smuggling #smugglers #mourir_en_mer #décès #naufrage #parcours_migratoires #itinéraires_migratoires #routes_migratoires #frontières #fermeture_Des_frontières #contrôles_migratoires #contrôles_frontaliers

  • L’externalisation des #contrôles_migratoires est le fait pour un État de déléguer à un État voisin la mission de contrôler la #frontière du premier sur son propre #territoire, en assumant généralement les violations des droits de l’homme qui y sont liées. Situation qu’on trouve à #Calais, mais aussi sur le littoral français, belge et néerlandais à la frontière britannique, comme en Italie à la frontière française, mais aussi suisse et autrichienne.

    L’Italie vient ainsi d’expulser quarante-huit #exilés soudanais arrêtés à #Vintimille, à la #frontière_française, vers le #Soudan.
    L’Espace #Schengen était un espace où les contrôles aux frontières entre État membres avaient était abolis, à une époque où la Convention de Schengen sur le libre circulation des personnes était un des piliers de la construction européenne. Aujourd’hui, tous les États voisins de l’Italie, sauf la Slovénie, ont rétabli des contrôles à leur frontière avec elle, voire construit un #mur à la frontière comme l’Autriche. Sauf la Slovénie parce que les exilé-e-s viennent des Balkans par la Slovénie vers l’Italie, et de là vers les autres pays. La Slovénie a construit une clôture barbelée avec la Croatie sa voisine membre de l’Union européenne.

    http://passeursdhospitalites.wordpress.com/2016/08/27/quand-litalie-expulse-de-la-frontiere-francaise-ver

    Cette #expulsion a laissé des traces sur des #médias_militants mais aucun média français détectable par les moteurs de recherche, alors qu’il s’agit bien de l’externalisation sur le sol italien du contrôle de la frontière française.

    Et que la France et le Royaume-uni sont des pays moteurs du #Processus_de_Khartoum, qui est le cadre général de cette expulsion, et qui vise à traiter avec les États que fuient les exilé-e-s pour les empêcher d’arriver en #Europe.

    Tu veux devenir cobaye des relations entre États européens ? Welcome in Europe.

    http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan

  • Les compagnies aériennes, déléguées des gardes-frontières ?
    http://asile.ch/2016/01/28/29539

    Les compagnies aériennes sont tenues de s’assurer que les voyageurs qu’elles transportent sont dotés de documents d’identité et de visas valables, sous peine de se voir sanctionner par les pays de destination. Ce que l’on appelle les « carrier sanctions » existent en Suisse depuis 2008. Elles sont également prévues par la Convention de Schengen. […]

  • Greece Furious Over Schengen Suspension Plans

    Greece has responded furiously to proposals to modify the Schengen agreement which would see the country’s borders effectively sealed off from the rest of the continent.
    EU interior ministers meeting in Amsterdam on Monday discussed moving the southern frontier of the passport-free travel zone, which includes most of the EU, to the north, deploying joint police forces along the Macedonia-Greece border. Other European states piled pressure on Greece to do more to control the influx of migrants into Europe via its shores.

    http://europe.newsweek.com/greece-schengen-suspension-419590
    #Grèce #Schengen #asile #migrations #réfugiés #fermeture_des_frontières #contrôles_migratoires

  • Bulgaria’s Border Police cooperates with hunters

    One could think it was just a bad coincidence when a group of 19 hunters met a group of refugees near the Turkish-Bulgarian border, near of the village of Evrenozovo (near Malko Tarnovo) last Saturday. After the hunters called the police, the group of 30 migrants was arrested by the Bulgarian border police. On the very same day, hundreds of right wing protesters walked on the streets of Sofia to support the police officer that shot the Afghani man.
    Only a few days later Venko Kalinchev, the secretary of the hunting and fishing association Elen (Deer) in Kyustendil stated that there is a close working together with the Bulgarian Border Police and in the region of the village of Dolno Kobile (near Kjustendil), several groups were detected by the hunters. That statement was made not even one week after the fatal shooting of a young Afghan man in the Bulgarian forest.

    Meanwhile volunteers at the Serbian city of Dimitrovgrad, close to the Serbian-Bulgarian border report about “multiple independent reports of police robbing, beating, and imprisoning refugees“ in Bulgaria. Due to the fence people walk long distances through the mountains and forests to reach Sofia and afterwards the borders of Serbia. At the moment about 200 people cross the Serbian border on a daily basis.

    http://bulgaria.bordermonitoring.eu/2015/10/22/bulgarias-border-police-cooperates-with-hunters
    #migrations #asile #réfugiés #contrôles_migratoires #chasseurs #Bulgarie
    signalé par @reka

  • #Frontex et l’#externalisation des #contrôles_migratoires. L’exemple de la coopération avec les #Etats_africains.

    Depuis l’été 2006, Frontex, l’agence européenne pour la gestion de la coopération aux frontières extérieures des Etats membres de l’Union européenne, coordonne une opération de contrôle et de surveillance aux larges des côtes mauritaniennes et sénégalaises : HERA. Caractéristique des formes de coopération développées par Frontex avec les Etats hors UE (notamment les Etats africains), l’#opération_HERA permet de révéler le rôle de Frontex dans l’externalisation des politiques de l’UE et ses enjeux.


    http://emi-cfd.com/echanges-partenariats/?p=4154
    #Mauritanie #Sénégal #mer #Afrique #contrôles_frontaliers

  • #Hein_de_Haas | Le #trafic de #migrants est la conséquence des #contrôles_migratoires… et non pas la cause

    Les politique qui visent à « combattre la #migration_illégale » sont vouées à l’échec car elles sont parmi les causes du phénomène qu’ils prétendent « combattre ». Il est troublant de voir comment les gouvernements utilisent des termes tels que « #combattre » et « #lutter » pour décrire leurs tentatives de #stopper les migrants et #réfugiés à arriver sur le territoire européen. Cependant, le vrai scandale réside dans le fait que les gouvernements et les agences de migration tels que #Frontex utilisent sans aucune honte ces tragédies pour augmenter les #dépenses permettant de « combattre la migration illégale », alors que ces mesures ne feront qu’augmenter la dépendance vis-à-vis des #passeurs, empêcher l’accès des réfugiés à une #protection et entrainer encore plus de #morts aux #frontières .

    http://www.asile.ch/vivre-ensemble/2013/11/12/hein-de-haas-le-trafic-de-migrants-est-la-consequence-des-controles-migratoire

    #migration #asile

  • The deadly cost of tighter border controls

    The calls for stricter border controls, which are echoing throughout Europe, will increase rather than decrease the risk of tragedies such as the Lampedusa disaster, argues an immigration expert. That is why the EU should first reform its asylum policy.

    http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/4211031-deadly-cost-tighter-border-controls

    http://www.presseurop.eu/files/images/article/Chappatte-immigration-lampedusa.jpg?1381242128

    #frontière #Europe #migration #Lampedusa #contrôles_migratoires #politique_migratoire