Since 2016, Turkey has hosted refugees from Syria as a part of a deal with the European Union, where those fleeing the war in the Middle Eastern country were headed.
In May this year, 15 EU countries demanded that the bloc tighten its asylum policy to make it easier to transfer asylum seekers to third countries.
These countries included Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.
In February, Italy and Albania signed a five-year deal for the European nation to transfer asylum seekers from “safe” countries to detention centres in Albania. But in November, seven asylum seekers from Bangladesh and Egypt were taken from Albania to Italy after an Italian court rejected the government’s request to detain them in the Balkan nation.
Why is Trump’s plan controversial?
Trump’s deportation plan intends to move people to countries to which they have no links.
A mass deportation plan would need the cooperation of many foreign governments.
In addition, many lawyers and activists argue that turning away asylum seekers fleeing violence or persecution represents a violation of international law.
During Trump’s first term, he carried out a similar measure between 2019 and 2020, placing immigrants on a plane to Guatemala. This move, smaller in scale than Trump’s current plan, was halted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The US civil rights nonprofit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and other pro-immigrant rights groups sued Trump over this plan. The case is still pending in federal court.
“We sued over this type of policy during the first Trump administration because it was illegal and put asylum seekers at grave risk,” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU, told NBC.
In November, the ACLU released a statement, saying, “We are crystal clear that the next Trump administration will do everything in its power to make mass deportation raids a reality.”
Source: Daily Pakistan News
