The European Parliament, led by a conservative far-right alliance, endorses a drastic expansion of deportations. In effect, the far-right has used migration to break into the European political centre.
Stefi Richani
Europe is quietly building its own ICE.
On 26 March MEPs voted to endorse a sweeping new deportation regime expanding detention, enabling home raids, and dramatically increasing the policing of our communities.
They did so despite an outright take-over by rightwing groups, embroiling the legislative process in controversy over collaboration between political centre and the far-right.
Now, the text is being negotiated with European heads of states.
If adopted, the law would oblige EU governments to “detect” undocumented people in workplaces, schools, hospitals, and public spaces.
Along with excessive detention periods — including of unaccompanied minors and families with children, deportations to countries that people have never set foot in, and sweeping digital surveillance provisions, the law signals a new balance of power in the European Union.
Authoritarian policy is becoming the norm. The far-right has used migration to break into the European political centre – with ordinary Europeans footing the bill.
Surveillance, detention and deportation
It is not just the European Parliament.
National governments are pushing for invasive “investigative measures” during negotiations that risk formalising racial profiling, allowing appearance, ethnicity or religion to become proxies for legal status.
Scenes increasingly familiar in parts of the US — children forcibly separated from their parents, abductions in broad daylight, fatal police enforcement — would become routine in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and beyond.
The ICE parallels are unquestionable, with previous versions allowing authorities to enter private homes, homeless shelters, health clinics and churches to find undocumented people.
The bill would also create the legal pathways for “return hubs” – offshore deportation prisons modelled on policies pursued by Australia on Nauru, the US in El Salvador, and the UK’s aborted Rwanda scheme.
The far-right tightens its hold
Far-right parties have spent years demanding mass deportations, promoting “remigration” rhetoric and calling for expanded surveillance powers. What they struggled to achieve electorally, they are now achieving legislatively.
Just before a vote on the law, leaked group chats revealed cooperation between conservative politicians on the law — including members of the European People’s Party and far-right lawmakers such as Germany’s AfD — breaking the long-standing ‘cordon sanitaire’ and sparking backlash in Berlin.
As in the US, the consequences of normalising mass deportation rhetoric is not limited to migrant communities.
Implementing this legislation would require billions in taxpayer funding for detention facilities, deportation flights and expanded policing powers.
Frontex — the EU’s Border and Coast Guard — has seen its budget balloon to €12bn, despite repeated allegations of involvement in illegal pushbacks and deadly border practices.
The Deportation Regulation would expand its operations, with the cheque likely to rise further.
The only winners here are the private corporations, technology contractors and far-right ideologues envisioning a Europe without us.
As freedoms are curtailed, solidarity is criminalised, and opposition is repressed, EU values and the ‘rule of law’ collapse in the face of far-right dogmas.
In 2025, widespread protests broke out across Germany against CDU negotiations with AfD on immigration issues. In early February, mass protests took place in Italy and across the EU against the deployment of US ICE officers in Milan for the Winter Olympic Games.
Civil society organisations and public service unions are mobilising against the regulation. Over 1000 public healthcare professionals have pledged to ‘refuse to be instruments’, warning that turning hospitals and schools into enforcement sites undermines access to essential services.
Progressive political groups attempted to block negotiations in the European Parliament but failed, despite warnings from theEuropean Data Protection Supervisor, UN human rights rapporteurs, legal experts, the Council of Europe, UNHCR, civilsociety, and over 100,000 people.
The Deportation Regulation forces a broader question: what does safety mean in Europe — strong public services and resilient communities, or an ever-expanding apparatus of surveillance, prisons and deportation?
The legislation is now in its final stages.
EU governments alone retain the power to halt negotiations and reverse the imposition of US-style deportation policy in Europe.
This will be a final test of the ability of European governments to push back, defend supposed ‘European values’ and resist the full encroachment of the far-right.
