The EU is Paving the Way for ICE-Style Deportations
On the Claire Byrne show last month, Jim O’Callaghan was asked if it would be an “acceptable practice to lift people off the streets who shouldn’t be here”, in a manner similar to the deportations being carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. “We’re nowhere near what’s happening in the United States”, O’Callaghan responded.
While it's true that the scale and violence of immigration enforcement in the United States far exceeds anything currently seen in Ireland, the Minister’s comments obscure the fact that his government has been largely supportive of EU-level proposals that would move EU migration policy in precisely that direction.
And while nothing comparable currently exists in Ireland, parts of Europe are already much closer to the reality in the U.S.
Much of the machinery for an ICE-style approach to detention and deportation already exists in the institutional infrastructure of EU law enforcement agencies, specifically the rapidly expanding European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, and in the practices, both formal and clandestine, of the border and coast guards of some EU member states.
EU border forces operate with impunity
In many parts of the EU, national police officers, border guard and coast guard authorities are already engaged in mass expulsions, arbitrary detention and violence against migrants and operate with impunity.
On the Greek mainland, these expulsions do not only target undocumented migrants or asylum seekers who enter without formal authorisation. There have also been reports of individuals with valid immigration permission and on some occasions, even EU citizens, being racially profiled, apprehended and expelled with no legal process.
In 2022, a French-Turkish dual citizen who fled political persecution in Turkey was abducted by Greek forces. Despite reportedly showing them her French passport and ID, she was forcibly returned across the Evros river to a military zone in Turkey, where she was captured by Turkish soldiers and imprisoned with a six-year sentence. An EU-resident interpreter working for Frontex was also racially profiled and pushed back across the same border a year prior.
Those who provide assistance to refugees are also increasingly being targeted and criminalised. In January, after an 8 year trial, Seán Binder and other search-and-rescue activists were acquitted of felony charges that included people smuggling, belonging to a criminal organisation and money laundering in Greece. Their victory in court has not prevented the Greek government from continuing its persecution of those who support refugees. This week, Norway arrested Tommy Olsen and may extradite him to Greece to face trial. Olsen’s “crime” is running an independent monitoring agency, Aegean Boat Report, that notifies authorities about boats in distress, notifies Greek authorities about the arrival of migrants in Greece, and reports on pushbacks.
While these abuses periodically attract criticism from EU officials, they nevertheless continue under the watch of Frontex, and in many cases, with the agency’s direct involvement.
Even with repeated findings that the agency has facilitated and concealed systematic pushbacks, its power and resources continue to expand. Frontex, like ICE, has wide enforcement powers, limited oversight, and an expanding mandate.
EU leaders are now in the process of passing laws to harden these practices further, strengthening deportation regimes not only at Europe’s external borders, but across the territory of EU member states.
Offshore Detention
One of the most significant proposals being negotiated is offshore detention, the latest stage in the EU’s long-running project of border externalisation. A vote in the European Parliament on 10 February brought us closer to this prospect.
MEPs voted to allow people to be deported to countries they have never been to, countries which would be on an EU-wide list of “safe third countries.”
Under proposals still taking shape, people refused international protection could be transferred to countries outside of the EU and held in offshore detention sites while awaiting expulsion. These proposed offshore detention facilities are being marketed as ‘return hubs’ – conjuring up images of human beings as unwanted delivery packages.
Return hubs are designed to widen the range of countries to which people can be deported, particularly where deportations to an individual’s country of origin are blocked by war or serious human rights concerns.
By allowing transfers to ‘third countries’ with which the EU or a Member State has a so-called “return agreement”, the reforms would formalise offshore detention as part of EU migration policy and render many more people legally deportable.
In September last year, The Irish Times reported that Ireland’s Justice Minister, Jim O’Callaghan, was “open” to the use of such “deportation hubs” outside EU borders. The Minister qualified this position by insisting, in typical EU managerial speak, that any such facilities must “respect the human rights of deportees” and represent “good value.”
European Council records published by the watchdog organisation Statewatch, however, show that Ireland had already supported most of the legal reforms necessary to make offshore detention possible at EU level months earlier.
The ‘Mega’ warehouse detention centres now being opened up by ICE across the United States might seem a world away from Europe on the face of it – but the EU has created the conditions for this to become the reality here too.
Expulsions and ICE style raids
Alongside plans for “return hubs”, there are also plans to try to expand states’ powers to detain and remove people domestically, extending the length of immigration detention, widening the grounds on which people can be incarcerated, and expanding enforcement measures intended to secure deportations.
Among these is a new provision allowing authorities to conduct investigations and home raids, with searches extending beyond the homes of those facing removal to other “relevant premises”, which could potentially include the homes of citizens suspected of sheltering undocumented people, as well as spaces used by humanitarian organisations.
The British government’s recent policy of increasing immigration raids to the “highest level in history” is already having consequences in Ireland. According to the BBC, there were 187 raids in the north last year, which led to 234 arrests. Raids have increased by 76% and arrests have increased by 169%. Those arrested are often detained for a number of days at Larne House, from where they are then transferred to a longer term detention centre in England or Scotland and deported onward from there.
Frontex Expansion
Over the past 20 years, the EU has been expanding Frontex’s competencies. Established in 2004 in the wake of the post–9/11 war on terror, around the same time period that the United States created ICE, the agency was initially presented as a coordination body, intended to support cooperation between national border authorities.
Over the past two decades, Frontex has transformed into something far more powerful. Its mandate has been repeatedly expanded to include operational command, surveillance, intelligence gathering, forced return operations, and the deployment of armed personnel. Its budget has grown from roughly €6 million in its early years to more than €900 million annually. Frontex is now authorised to operate beyond EU borders, and in 2025 announced plans for a permanent training centre in Warsaw.
A major reform in 2019 authorised Frontex to recruit a permanent standing corps of 10,000 border guards, equipped with weapons and executive powers, and to operate with increasing autonomy from national governments.
EU institutions have continued to reward Frontex with greater funding, broader competencies, and weaker oversight, mirroring many of the structural features that have made ICE such a powerful instrument of enforcement in the United States.
In expanding Frontex, the EU is laying the administrative and legal foundations for an increasingly aggressive, centralised, and militarised border regime.
What comes next
The European Parliament will soon vote on the Deportations Regulation, the centrepiece of this new enforcement architecture. Over 250 organisations have already called on MEP’s to reject it.
At home, punitive policies against asylum seekers that treat them as a burden and a security threat go hand in hand with the broader erosion of access to asylum by the EU. And across Europe, solidarity with racialised and irregularised migrants is increasingly being criminalised.
The mass displacement already driven by the US and Israel’s imperialist wars will only increase the numbers of people seeking safety.
O’Callaghan’s claim that Ireland is “nowhere near” the United States may be accurate for now, but it obscures the direction of policy being pursued under his own watch. Through the expansion of Frontex, the normalisation of pushbacks, the development of offshore deportation hubs, the EU is solidifying the legal and institutional infrastructure for a mass deportation regime. Ireland’s government has not taken a stand against these reforms and in many cases has supported them.
