Five European Countries Plan First Deportation Centre in Africa for 2027, Details Emerge
- A five-nation EU coalition including Greece, Germany and Denmark announced plans to open the first migrant return hub in an unnamed African country by late 2027
- Greece's Migration Minister Thanos Plevris said the facilities will operate as open transit centres, not closed detention sites, with EU states keeping legal responsibility
- Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders raised concerns over the plan, warning that oversight and legal protections cannot be fully guaranteed
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A coalition of five European Union member states has announced plans to establish what would be the first shared migrant return hub on African soil, targeting individuals whose asylum claims have been rejected by EU courts.
Greece, Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands are behind the initiative, with Greece's Minister of Migration, Thanos Plevris, confirming during an interview with Greek television channel ANT1 that the facility would open in the second half of 2027.
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He linked the timeline to Greece's upcoming presidency of the EU Council.
What the return hubs will look like
Plevris was emphatic that the facilities would not operate as closed detention centres. "We are not talking about centres in the sense that someone whose asylum application is rejected is sent to a closed facility in a third country," he said, describing them instead as open transit arrangements used while final removals to a migrant's country of origin are being organised.
The minister confirmed that an African host country had been selected but declined to identify it publicly. Diplomatic sources and EU-adjacent media have repeatedly pointed to Rwanda or Uganda as possible locations, though neither has been officially confirmed. Full financing for the project will come from the five participating states, with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration expected to provide monitoring oversight.
Crucially, legal responsibility for transferred individuals will remain with the EU member states rather than being transferred to the African partner country, a design feature apparently intended to limit exposure to human rights litigation.
Why previous schemes failed
The announcement comes after a string of costly and legally troubled attempts by individual European governments to pursue similar arrangements. The United Kingdom spent £715 million on its Rwanda deportation plan before the British Supreme Court struck it down in 2024, finding that asylum seekers transferred there could face onward persecution. Only four people relocated voluntarily during the entire programme.
Italy's agreement with Albania, which became operational in 2024, hit immediate obstacles when Italian courts blocked transfers after ruling that countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt could not be broadly classified as safe.
The Albanian facility was later repurposed as a deportation centre for definitively rejected cases, with projected costs set to exceed €670 million by 2028. Denmark separately halted its own Rwanda negotiations in early 2023 following pushback from the European Commission and rights organisations.
The five-nation coalition says revised EU asylum rules now permit transfers to third countries without requiring a migrant to have a prior personal connection there. The EU Return Regulation, agreed by the Council and European Parliament on 17 June 2026, provides a common legal framework for the initiative, though it had not yet been formally adopted at the time of the announcement.
Organisations including Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders remain unconvinced, warning that independent oversight, legal representation and adequate medical care cannot be reliably guaranteed within such hubs, and that previous experience has shown steep financial costs alongside limited actual returns.
US expands visa overstay crackdown to 15 airports
In a related development, YEN.com.gh reported that the US has started detaining foreign nationals with expired visas directly at airports.
This comes as ICE has carried out arrests at check-in counters, boarding gates and arrival terminals across at least 15 airports in recent weeks.
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Source: YEN.com.gh
