Giorgia Meloni’s conservative government has begun sending illegal migrants from Italy to offshore processing detention centres in Albania, with the maiden ship setting sail from the island of Lampedusa and arriving on Wednesday.
Ten Egyptian and six Bengali migrants were removed from Italy aboard the naval Libra patrol ship on Monday on a journey to the port town of Shengjin in northwestern Albania, docking at the town on Wednesday morning.
“The first ship that will take irregular migrants to the repatriation centres set up in Albania has left Lampedusa,” Brothers of Italy MP Sara Kelany said per Il Giornale as it departed. “We have built a replicable and effective model to manage clandestine arrivals, alleviate the migratory pressure on Italy and strengthen our internal security.”
The migrant removals mark the fruition of a long-awaited plan from the Meloni government in Rome, which negotiated a deal with Tirana to house up to 36,000 migrants per year in detention centres.
The €670 million ($730m/£560m) five-year deal will allow migrants to be held offshore while their asylum claims are processed rather than allowing the illegals to remain in Italy. While the centres will be in Albania, Italy will still be responsible for security, and the properties will technically remain under Italian jurisdiction.
Under the scheme, migrants will be held for up to four weeks in the detention centres. Should Italian authorities deem them worthy of asylum, they will be transferred to migrant centres in Italy. However, should their claims be determined to be spurious, they will be sent back to their country of origin.
Rome hopes that sending migrants directly to Albania will deter further attempts to reach their shores by aliens, even though it is unlikely that all illegals will be removed under the scheme.
The Meloni government initially faced criticism for failing to live up to its hardline campaign stances on illegal immigration, such as a promise to impose a naval blockade in the Mediterranean to prevent illegal crossings, which never came to pass.
However, Meloni’s multi-pronged approach to the crisis—including crafting deals with African nations and clamping down on ‘migrant taxi’ NGO ships—has begun to pay off. According to Interior Ministry figures, illegal migration has decreased by over 61 per cent this year compared to 2023.
Should the Albanian plan also prove successful, it could serve to embarrass the Labour Party government in Britain, which scrapped a similar scheme with Rwanda as one of its first acts after coming to power in July. The Albanian model is also reportedly being considered in Brussels as a potential framework for the EU to handle illegal migration into the bloc.
The removal of illegals has been criticised by globalist institutions, with Amnesty International saying that it has “strong concern about possible violations of human rights related to the measures provided for by the protocol, in particular, with regard to generalized detention, automatic detention and search and rescue operations at sea, considering it a violation, by Italy, of its international obligations.”
