As reported by POLITICO, the much-discussed solution to Europe’s migration crisis is in the brink of collapse. After three months of their opening, the detention centers only consists of Italian police, who have started sunbathing and adopting stray dogs.
The migrant center is situated about 60 kilometers northwest of Tirana, and it was touted as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s grand solution to Europe’s migration crisis. The center would have served as her flagship plan to intercept, detain, and process asylum-seekers in Albania.
However, after a year and €67.5 million, the program is in a state of legal limbo, with no way to process asylum-seekers, abandoned buildings that are already collapsing, and Italian employees going back to their homes.
Volt Europe co-President Francesca Romana D’Antuono, who visited the detention facility in Gjadër in late November and participated in anti-camp demonstrations alongside local activists, told POLITICO, “It looked like a ghost town.” D’Antuono claims that the senior police officer who went with them was not happy with the way they questioned the employees. “I believe they perceive the ridiculousness of it all,” she remarked.
The first 16 migrants, who came from Egypt and Bangladesh, reached the centers in October aboard an Italian warship. However, after the Rome tribunal’s immigration judges rejected the plan, all 16 were sent back to Italy within seven days.
Fully Staffed Ghost Town
Sources at the Italian embassy have confirmed that all stations are still fully staffed, including police officers on duty around-the-clock, in case there is an unexpected influx of refugees, even though staffing levels were reduced last month. A portion of the Italian employees of Medihospes, the organization in charge of running the centers, began traveling back to Italy in late November.
According to the project’s goal, the refugees who are apprehended by the Italian Coast Guard will first be brought to a reception and sorting center in Shëngjin, where their personal information will be processed and they will be provided with basic medical care. About 8 kilometers inland from the regional city of Lezhë is the second component of the operation, a detention camp in Gjadër. Additionally, Shëngjin was used as a detention center for Afghan refugees, especially following the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover of Afghanistan. Many refugees stayed there for almost two years while they awaited permission to relocate to the United States, despite the fact that it was only a temporary shelter.
Although there haven’t been any migrants for weeks, Sandër Marashi, the port manager at Shëngjin, stated that “the entire Italian staff is still at the port and at the center, and they manage everything here.”
A Very Costly Waiting Area
Residents of Shëngjin, a resort town, claim that the police spend their days relaxing at the five-star Rafaelo Resort, eating seafood and enjoying the sun while their umistakable Carabinieri police cars are parked in front of the resort.
The employees of Gjadër, a mountainside village with only a few hundred residents for company, are reportedly lonely, bored, and growingly resentful of their Shëngjin coworkers, who they say are enjoying life to the fullest, according to Albanian media.
With no refugees in sight, the local prison guards at Gjadër have resorted to entertaining and rescuing the village’s stray dogs, according to an article in the Italian penitentiary police’s internal magazine.
The Italian government set aside €65 million in April for the two centers’ construction, and an additional €2.5 million for the 2024 salaries of the Italian employees. The government calculated that the total cost of operating and maintaining the centers would be approximately €680 million over the following five years.