On 27 April 2021, the EU Commission published its first EU Strategy on voluntary return and reintegration. The strategy is envisaged by the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum as an integral policy for a common EU system for returns, and conceives actions in seven areas to increase the number of voluntary returns. If, on paper, the text recognizes voluntary return as being more efficient, cost-effective and preferable to forced return, in practice this is contradicted by several ongoing legislative proposals which make access to voluntary return more difficult. The text highlights the role of “swift and efficient return border procedures” to encourage migrants to take up voluntary returns, including for people in administrative detention and those whose asylum application is still pending. The Strategy marks an increased role for Frontex in promoting voluntary returns, by taking over the activities of the European Return and Reintegration Network and developing a common curriculum for returns counselling – and this, despite the growing scrutiny into the lack of accountability and the potential involvement of Frontex in serious human rights violations.

The NGO Legal Centre Lesvos filed a lawsuit before the European Court of Human Rights accusing Greece of having deliberately abandoned at sea 200 people in October 2020. According to witnesses, passengers were brought into Turkish waters and abandoned at sea after the coastguard beat and confiscated some of their belongings. Hundreds of suspected pushback incidents have been recorded in the past year. In at least one case, Frontex is accused of covering up evidence of a Greek pushback operation.

The German news magazine "Der Spiegel", the German broadcaster ARD, the organization "Lighthouse Reports" in Netherlands and the French newspaper “Libération" published a report that accuses Frontex of having flown over migrant boats and informed the Libyan coast guard of their coordinates, even when merchant ships or private sea rescuers in the area could have conducted faster rescues. According to the investigation, this has occurred in at least 20 cases since January 2020. On one occasion, 91 migrants died at sea or went missing because Frontex failed to alert nearby merchant ships or private sea rescuers.

In February, the European Commission completed its first factual assessment on the level of cooperation in readmission proceedings by 39 states whose nationals require a visa to enter the EU. The assessment was required under the Article 25a of the Visa Code which restricts access to regular pathways for applicants or categories of applicants from countries which are considered not to be cooperating sufficiently with the EU return policies. The report finds that for just over a third of third countries, the level of cooperation is considered to be improved.

In its Annual Torture Report, the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN) presented evidence of systematic violence perpetrated during pushback activities in Croatia and Greece in 2020, as well as chain pushbacks in Austria, Italy and Slovenia. Violence includes the use of electric discharge weapons, forced undressing, use of excessive and disproportionate force, violence with firearms, inhumane treatment inside police vehicles and inside detention facilities.

“Lost in Europe”, a cross-national investigative journalism project, revealed that 18,292 unaccompanied children were registered as missing between 2018 and 2020. It is thought that children go missing because of inadequate reception conditions, lengthy and complex family reunification procedures, lack of cross border cooperation and lack of information of both professionals and children. Data on the nationalities of missing children is not available for all EU countries, or only available until 2019, and the research revealed that available data on missing unaccompanied children is often incomplete or inconsistent.  

Various associations in France have petitioned the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, asking the Committee to investigate the treatment of unaccompanied children and potential child rights violations. The petition contains various proof and data and argues that the children are harmed because they are too often erroneously categorised as adults, which is aggravated by the lack of harmonisation of practices within the French territory. The petitioners hope that a Committee inquiry will help reform the regulatory framework currently in force in France.

According to Human Rights Watch French police summarily expelled dozens of unaccompanied children to Italy each month in violation of French and international law, by recording on official documents different ages or birth dates than the children declared. The authorities are also thought to have returned adults, including families with young children, without telling them they had a right to seek asylum or apply for a residence status in France.

The General Court of the EU has ruled that Frontex's costs claims against transparency activists were excessive, setting € 10,500 as recoverable costs. Frontex was seeking to recuperate almost €24,000 in legal fees after winning an EU general court case against transparency activists Luisa Izuzquiza and Arne Semsrott. The campaigners had sought access to the name, flag and type of each vessel deployed by Frontex in the central Mediterranean. Frontex had refused their request citing security issues and was supported by a CJEU ruling in November 2019. The European Parliament has called on Frontex to withdraw its demand for the legal fees, underlying its potential chilling effect on civil society. The Parliament also voted to postpone the closure of Frontex’s accounts for the financial year 2019 pending further clarifications on a series of issues. In January 2021 the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament set up a Frontex Scrutiny Working Group to look into allegations around the EU's border security agency's role in the illegal pushbacks.

On 19 May, the Public Prosecutor of Agrigento, Sicily, dismissed the case against Carola Rackete, the commander of the Sea Watch 3 ship, who was accused of resistance against a warship almost two years ago. The facts date back to the night of 29 June 2019, when Carola entered the Port of Lampedusa invoking the state of necessity as she could no longer guarantee safety on board to the 42 people rescued. A police patrol boat tried to stop her twice and the captain was arrested on charges of "resistance or violence against a warship", a crime that includes a sentence of between three and ten years. The prosecutors of Agrigento maintained that she acted out of a state of necessity and had the duty to bring the migrants to a safe harbour.

On 21 April, the European Commission proposed new rules on the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The proposal would ban certain uses of AI, including the use by law enforcement of real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces, with exceptions for the prosecution of serious crimes. “High-risk” uses of AI are also identified, including for predictive policing or certain uses in migration, asylum and border control. Under the proposed rules, companies or public authorities that develop or use AI for such “high risk” applications would face specific obligations, such as checks by designated national oversight bodies, for some, but not all, “high risk” uses, and registration of the technology in an EU database. The proposal has been criticised for its failure to ban all unacceptable uses of AI, its strong focus on developers of technology and less focus on users and affected people, the largely self-assessment of conformity to rules, and inadequate safeguards on “high risk” uses. The risks of the growing use of digital technology and large-scale data processing for migration control have been repeatedly highlighted by human rights experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur on racism.

On 29 April the Domestic Abuse Bill, labelled a landmark achievement for the UK, was signed into law. While the new Act includes limited provisions on reviewing and developing a code of conduct on data-sharing of migrant victims’ details with the Home Office for immigration purposes, proposed amendments by campaign groups for the bill to include an explicit statutory obligation preventing migrant victims’ details from being shared with immigration authorities were rejected by the government. The Act also does not integrate campaigners’ proposals to lift No Recourse to Public Funds for the duration of the Support for Migrant Victims Pilot Scheme to support women who do not qualify for public benefits.

The Deutsche Welle has reported that in 2020, Germany deported 755 people to African countries, the majority of which to Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. Trends to deportations persist in 2021, with 24 people returned to Nigeria in January. The pandemic and travel restrictions have increased the adverse effects of deportation. Some migrants are deported simply for not having the required documents to prove their identity, but obtaining official documents is extremely complicated during this period. In addition, most of the countries where people are returned lack doctors, intensive care beds, ventilators, or vaccines.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) has released a new report that looks at the barriers faced by undocumented pregnant women in accessing maternal health care in the EU. In 16 EU member states, undocumented migrant women’s access to affordable maternal health care throughout pregnancy is undermined or denied due to laws and policies that directly, or indirectly, prevent them from accessing free or subsidised care. CRR recommends EU countries to remove all cost, legal and administrative barriers to maternal health care, and to establish mechanisms that ensure no immigration consequences for undocumented mothers when they access maternal health care. The report further calls for the collection of disaggregated data on undocumented migrant women’s maternal health outcomes. The need for disaggregated data on the health outcomes of migrants, including those with irregular status, is underscored in a recent report by the World Health Organisation.

Caritas Europa’s new policy paper, Demystifying the regularisation of undocumented migrants, shows how regularisation can allow undocumented migrants to access their rights, and provides recommendations for how regularisation can be implemented. The paper recommends that regularisation should be seen alongside efforts to expand regular migration pathways, and that governments should facilitate the issuance of stable residence permits to avoid pushing people into irregularity. Moreover, it urges the Commission to coordinate and share best practices between member states, and calls on governments to cool down the heated debate on regularisation and affirm it as a legitimate policy option.

While the rest of Portugal started to reopen, two districts in the Odemira municipality had to remain in lockdown due to a high infection rate, which mostly concerned migrants who work in agriculture and who live in appalling conditions. Local authorities estimate that at least 6,000 migrant workers live in extremely poor conditions.

On 23 April, Irish Minister for Justice Helen McEntee announced her draft proposals for a scheme to regularise thousands of undocumented migrants in Ireland. Although a very welcome proposal, local civil society is concerned that current timeframe criteria (i.e. having lived in Ireland for four years, or three years with children) will leave many behind. The proposal is currently open for consultation and the scheme is expected to enter into force before the end of the year.

The Biden administration has ordered U.S. immigration enforcement agencies to stop using terms such as “alien” and “illegal alien” when referring to irregular immigrants, in both internal and external communications. The new guidance requires immigration agencies to use the term “undocumented” instead.