Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers
What happens to failed asylum seekers after they have been deported to their home countries is largely unknown. They might be apprehended by state security and be sent to prison, tortured or even tried for treason because of what they allegedly said about their country of origin in the asylum interview.
On this website we aim to establish a network that can be used by organisations and individuals to monitor and save such failed asylum seekers. This is important because many failed asylum seekers may have genuine refugee claims but for a number of reasons (outlined below) have been rejected.
We are currently in the process of recruiting partner organisations and committed individuals who are prepared to undertake such potentially sensitive work.If your project can be listed on this website, please contact failedasylumseekersdeportation [at] gmail [dot] com (failedasylumseekersdeportation[at]gmail.com) and provide us with information of the services your organisation can offer to deportees.
We hope to list individuals or organisations from each country of origin that could be alerted by an organisation in the deporting country when a failed asylum seeker is being deported to danger. This contact in the country of origin could then meet the deportee upon arrival and provide assistance. It has been our experience that the very presence of such a person meeting a failed asylum seeker can prevent their possible detention. If the deportee is detained regardless, at least someone knows and may be able to initiate proceedings for their release. Moreover, what happens to failed asylum seekers once they are deported is under-researched and remains largely undocumented even though we posit that many serious human rights violations do take place post-deportation.
Therefore, the aims of this network are:
• to save failed asylum seekers from falling into the hands of their persecutors.
• to monitor what happens to failed asylum seekers on arrival in the country to which they have been deported;
• to generate information on the issue which might influence deportation policy in host countries.
There is urgent need for such a network. States increasingly use deportations as a way to ‘manage’ migration. In the UK, for example, the number of deportations has risen nearly 40% since 2005, with 40,000 people deported in 2010 alone. Annual deportations from the US have increased over 400% since 1996: a million people since November 2007.
Among those deported are asylum seekers having genuine fears of persecution and whose claims to asylum should not have been rejected. Upon return to their countries of origin they may be faced once more with persecution. What is more, in many countries of origin simply applying for asylum in another state is seen as treason.
A number of factors contribute to asylum seekers with genuine claims being rejected: for example, in the UK cuts to legal aid have denied many asylum seekers legal representation and access to appeals, whilst fast-track procedures and group determination approaches to Refugee Status Determination (RSD) mean that asylum seekers’ claims are not assessed properly. Furthermore, money is being pumped into ‘voluntary’ return programmes, which pressure asylum seekers to return of their own accord.
By monitoring deportations, we can gather information to better understand what happens to deportees upon return. Moreover, such data can be used to show how asylum systems are failing these people. Many deportees have been removed because the host governments claim that they face no risk on return. However, we have anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise: deportees have been detained, imprisoned and tortured. By systematically gathering quantifiable information, we aim to expose host governments to these realities. This will help on-going asylum claims, and, ultimately, shape fairer asylum policies.
Please see below for deportation monitoring centres by country. You can also find recent documents on deportation of failed asylum seekers below.
