After the EU Parliament passed legislation last week to detain and expel more migrants, some lawmakers chanted “Send them back.” The anti-migration measures were pushed by the far right — but passed thanks to centrist pro-EU parties.

Ten years ago, in response to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the repression of the Arab Spring, the EU instigated the “hotspot” policy. As I wrote back then, the term “hotspot” can be traced back to New York’s 1980s zero-tolerance policy and the first introduction of computing into police operations. The idea was that instead of responding to crimes after they happen, police units sit and wait at predicted “hotspots” to intervene before a crime happens. In 2016, the name was applied to a new method of detaining people on arrival in Europe, enforcing mass fingerprinting, screenings, and smuggling investigations. The “crime” was illegal entrance, the “heat” was simply people, and the “spots” were Mediterranean islands, from Lesbos to Lampedusa. For a decade, the hotspots have staggered onward without any proper definition under EU or national laws, a legal limbo in a political mess.

The New Asylum Pact coming into effect this month changes this — by finally regulating mass detention, engraving it into EU law. All people arriving in Europe can now be held in detention centers for up to 2.5 years while their claims are being examined. In order to do this, the new pact explicitly uses a contorted line of reasoning called the “legal fiction of non-entry,” authorizing member states to treat people physically present on national territory as if they were officially still outside of Europe.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/47751283