Immigration Policy Brief #192 | Inijah Quadri | October 16, 2025
Policy Issue Summary
International migration continues to grow, with the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimating there were 281 million international migrants globally in 2020. While much migration is South-South (between developing nations), displacement from conflict, climate change, and economic instability drives significant South-North movement. This visible migration has become a foundational issue for populist movements, particularly in Europe and North America, which frame migrants as a threat to cultural identity and national security. In response, governments are increasingly adopting deterrence-focused policies, raising significant human rights concerns.
In Europe, the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum entered into force on June 11, 2024, and will be applied after a two-year transition. It promises “strong and secure external borders” alongside common screening and fast-track procedures that make detention and returns easier. Core parts of the Pact include: (1) mandatory pre-entry screening (identity, health, security) typically within 7 days; (2) new fast-track “border procedures” to decide some asylum claims or refusals in up to 12 weeks (extendable), with more possibilities for detention; (3) expanded Eurodac fingerprint/biometrics (including for children) to track entries; and (4) a “solidarity” system where states can relocate people or pay financial contributions instead of relocating. Full application is expected from mid-2026 after the transition period.
At the national level, member states are also tightening controls. In Germany, a “Repatriation Improvement Act” took effect in Feb 2024 to speed deportations and expand detention/search powers. Germany and several neighbors also extended internal Schengen border checks (temporary controls reimposed at the borders between countries within Europe’s passport-free travel zone) into 2025 to curb irregular entries.
Europe is also aggressively outsourcing migration control. The EU’s migration deal with Tunisia (Memorandum of Understanding, July 16, 2023) tied over €1 billion in support to cooperation against irregular migration, including €105 million for border management. However, investigations in 2024–2025 documented widespread abuses by EU-funded Tunisian units, including beatings and the dumping of Black migrants in the desert, prompting renewed criticism. Simultaneously, Italy’s plan to process asylum seekers in Albania has been hit by a series of legal blows in 2025. While Italy signed a deal to transfer people intercepted at sea to Albanian centers for processing, courts have pushed back. In October 2024, the Court of Rome ordered 12 people returned from Albania to Italy, and in August 2025, the EU Court of Justice narrowed how “safe country” shortcuts can be used, delaying the scheme’s implementation.
In the United States, deterrence has shifted into overdrive. Refugee admissions have been frozen pending a new cap reportedly as low as 7,500 for FY2026. Authorities have redirected spy-satellite surveillance to the border and dismantled the CBP One app’s asylum scheduling function. CBP One was a mobile application that once scheduled asylum appointments at ports of entry. The app has been rebranded “CBP Home,” now tied to “self-deportation” and mass parole revocations.
Reports indicate the administration is preparing this record-low refugee cap for FY2026, with most reports suggesting priority will be given to white South African (Afrikaner) refugees. This selective pathway can be framed as prioritizing a nationality/minority group rather than setting an explicit racial quota, though rights groups criticize it as discriminatory. Even more, South Africa disputes that these white Afrikaners face persecution.
This trend is not limited to the Global North. In the Asia-Pacific region, restrictive policies are also gaining ground. Pakistan has resumed large-scale expulsions of Afghans, including people awaiting resettlement to the U.S., despite warnings from UN experts and humanitarian groups. In July–August 2025, after Proof-of-Registration cards expired, Pakistan restarted mass deportations/forced returns of Afghans, drawing formal warnings from UN human-rights experts. Meanwhile, in June 2023, Japan amended its Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act to allow deportation of people who apply for refugee status more than twice and to expand detention powers. Rights groups say this increases refoulement (the forced return of refugees or asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution) risks and Japan continues to recognize very few refugees each year.
The International Organization for Migration reports 2024 as the deadliest year on record for migrants worldwide, with the Mediterranean again among the most lethal routes. IOM recorded at least 8,938 deaths on migration routes in 2024 — the highest on record. Most deaths are from drowning (about 60% worldwide), followed by vehicle crashes, exposure/dehydration, and violence; the Mediterranean remained one of the deadliest corridors.
Analysis
The prevailing anti-immigrant nationalism promotes a simple, fear-driven narrative: borders are under siege, and only increasingly harsher government crackdown tactics can restore order. The EU Migration and Asylum Pact translates this narrative into law, institutionalizing swift border screenings, broadened detention, and a “return-first” mindset. Although the Pact contains formal rights language, its core design fundamentally shifts power toward containment and away from protection. Notably, the Pact formalizes expanded “border procedures” with curtailed in-country movement during processing and toughens data-collection rules in Eurodac.
This model’s inherent fault lines are starkly exposed through the externalization of border control. For example, Italy’s controversial Albania scheme attempts to move responsibility offshore, yet European courts have pushed back, challenging the idea that people can be expelled from the EU’s legal safeguards. Similarly, deals with nations like Tunisia involve exchanging funds for interdiction despite documented human rights abuses. This constitutes migration control by proxy, a system operating with less transparency and creating far greater risks for people on the move. Recent court and watchdog findings underline those risks: rulings in Rome and at the EU level have constrained “safe country” shortcuts, while reporting in 2024–2025 documented EU-funded Tunisian units committing abuses against Black migrants.
Pushbacks—summary expulsions without a genuine opportunity to seek asylum—have transitioned from isolated scandal to entrenched practice. In January 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) affirmed these violations by ruling against Greece in several key cases. On 7 January 2025, the ECHR decided A.R.E. v. Greece and G.R.J. v. Greece, finding strong indications of systematic pushbacks to Türkiye and violations of Articles 3 and 13 (ill-treatment and lack of effective remedy). While such legal rulings are vital, they remain insufficient to end collective punishment at Europe’s edges unless paired with robust political will.
The tragic reality of sea rescues illustrates how specific policy choices cost lives. Humanitarian organizations, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), have extensively documented state obstruction, including detaining NGO ships, assigning intentionally distant ports, and creating hostile conditions that undermine lifesaving missions. When rescue is treated as a liability rather than a necessity, more people inevitably disappear at sea. Central Mediterranean departures typically involve overcrowded rubber dinghies or unseaworthy wooden boats leaving Libya or Tunisia. Under international maritime law (SOLAS and the SAR Convention), all vessels and states must rescue people in distress and disembark them in a “place of safety.” Rules that make NGO rescue ships travel to distant ports (like those in northern Italy) after each rescue add extra days at sea and keep them away from the search area. Italy has also repeatedly detained NGO vessels.
In the United States, physical deterrence is increasingly paired with digital controls. Authorities have curtailed port-of-entry asylum access, revoked the parole status of hundreds of thousands who entered via the CBP One app, and rebranded the app to push people toward “voluntary” departure. Simultaneously, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) champions AI-driven surveillance, biometrics, and a “smart wall” as force multipliers. This technology, however, does not neutralize the underlying punitive politics; it merely automates them.
Legal and electoral challenges offer crucial avenues to slow the crackdown. In the U.S., Texas’s SB 4—which sought to allow state arrests of suspected undocumented migrants—was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by the Fifth Circuit in July 2025 and remains blocked. This means Texas still cannot enforce the law while the case continues. Across the Atlantic, the UK’s Supreme Court ruling in 2023, coupled with a change in government, effectively ended the controversial Rwanda offshoring plan, leading to thousands of asylum claims from people previously targeted for removal to Rwanda. These outcomes prove that these punitive policies can fail on the grounds of legality, cost, and basic efficacy.
A fundamentally different approach is possible. This involves expanding regular, safe migration pathways and establishing fair asylum processing. It means funding robust reception and integration services instead of relying on detention and outsourcing. Furthermore, it demands that rescue at sea be protected and enabled, and that surveillance be strictly limited to what is both necessary and rights-compliant. None of this is utopian; it builds on legal precedent, extensive watchdog reporting, and community resistance that have already forced course corrections. The essential choice is between systems that view and treat people as threats and systems that honor and treat people as human.
At the UN level, two key compacts set the framework: the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (2018, a non-binding agreement outlining objectives for managing migration) and the Global Compact on Refugees (2018, a framework for more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing). The 2023 Global Refugee Forum (a quadrennial event to track progress and announce new pledges) produced over 1,750 pledges, totaling about $2.2 billion. Progress on the migration compact is reviewed every four years at the International Migration Review Forum (IMRF), with the next session scheduled for 2026.
Engagement Resources
- Human Rights Watch (https://www.hrw.org/): Reporting and advocacy on migration, pushbacks, and border surveillance.
- Amnesty International (https://www.amnesty.org/): Legal analyses and urgent actions on detention, externalization, and asylum access.
- ACLU (https://www.aclu.org/): Litigation and monitoring on U.S. immigration enforcement and civil liberties.
- Border Violence Monitoring Network (https://www.borderviolence.eu/): Field documentation of pushbacks and violence along the Balkan and Greek routes.
- Statewatch (https://www.statewatch.org/): Investigations into European border policing, surveillance, and the criminalization of solidarity.
- Alarm Phone (https://alarmphone.org/): Civil hotline supporting people in distress at sea and documenting non-assistance.
- Refugees International (https://www.refugeesinternational.org/): Policy reporting on displacement drivers, resettlement, and humanitarian access.