The United States under President Donald Trump’s administration has been implementing a widely publicized crackdown on immigration, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) turning deportations into media events through videos and release of deportee names intended to spread fear. The scope of these actions has recently expanded to include legal residents, including academics, with Trump pledging to deport 11 million people – doubling those under President Biden and surpassing President Obama’s two-term period.
Abroad, the European Union is quietly enforcing its own immigration crackdown, with less visibility but equal harshness. In the initial nine months of 2024, EU countries issued 327,880 expulsion orders and forcibly removed 27,740 people between July and September. The new Pact on Migration and Asylum, established in December 2023 and in force since June 2024, is leading to faster deportations, expanded detention centers, and strengthened cooperation for removals. Candidat countries for EU membership are being transformed into a buffer zone, forced to implement the pact despite having no input in its creation – a situation likened to colonial coercion.
This strategy includes creating “return hubs” near and beyond EU borders to detain unwanted immigrants. This model, supported by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, involves sending people to regions like the Balkans, Turkey, and North Africa, with agencies like Frontex and IOM enforcing these actions. European countries are also strengthening readmission agreements, allowing the EU to return individuals to their origin or transit countries, effectively offloading migrants to the EU’s periphery.
In Croatia, bordering Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, the EU member state has played a key role in maintaining the EU’s border regime, normalizing pushbacks that have resulted in deaths and human rights abuses without accountability. The EU has also strengthened its role in migration management and externalized its border control efforts into third countries, including those in the Balkans, which have become a dumping ground for expelled individuals.
Documentation has shown widespread rights abuses within Croatian detention centers, including inhumane conditions and the practice of briefly detaining foreigners before pushing them across the border. This intensification of border police activities is complemented by joint patrols involving Slovenia and Italy, and increased surveillance.
Following discussions among EU ministers, Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic noted that deportations are no longer a taboo topic in the EU, indicating a potential acceleration of such measures. The new pact is allocating significant funds for policies intensifying the dehumanization of migrants and is expanding Frontex’s role, despite its history of involvement in rights violations. Across the EU, various forms of protest and action are emerging in response to these policies, highlighting the growing resistance to the treatment of migrants as scapegoats for militarized border control.
As international collaboration in surveillance technology, such as with Israel, continues to advance control measures, there is a growing need for transnational solidarity to resist these injustices and hold those in power accountable. Without this resistance, the machinery of control will only continue to expand, threatening the safety and dignity of an increasing number of people.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/3/29/its-not-just-trump-the-eu-is-also-waging-an-anti-migration-crusade?traffic_source=rss
