Deportations are being increasingly normalized on the EU level, contributing to the further victimization, but also criminalization, of vulnerable forced migrants. With the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is bound to be implemented in 2026, key objectives such as strengthening border management, security and control have been pushed to the top of the agenda list. Namely, via a regime of enhanced digital surveillance, including biometric identification systems for tracking people’s movements and a wide screening system of data collection and automatic exchange that will allow data collected in bulk to be exchanged between police forces across the EU (PICUM, 2024), the movement and existence of forced migrants is policed at every step of the way. This allows for racial profiling to be dispersed transnationally via intrusive tech, transforming technology into a tool for strengthening and maintaining fortress Europe.

While the new Pact was only recently adopted, the EU has long pushed for more aggressive and restrictive strategies to bolster its border regime via signing numerous treaties to externalize migration control and to fortify its borders, while in return undermining the responsibility to adhere to the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, which includes the principles of non-discrimination, non-penalization and non-refoulement. In this context, the principle of non-refoulement is particularly relevant, as ‘It provides that no one shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom (…) no Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee (…) to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.’ (UNHCR, 2010: 3, 30). The pact ignores this principle and sets the stage for grave human rights violations and their transfer to third countries, in which those deported face a myriad of new vulnerabilities, including the experience of liminality, the stage of being in between, characterized by ambiguity, uncertainty and precarity. The externalization of borders as part of the EU border management regime as such enables nation states to move away from any responsibility and accountability for following international refugee law. EU treaties with third countries to propagate the externalization of border include, but are not limited to: EU-Libya cooperation in the area of migration (since 2015), the EU-Turkey deal (2016), the EU-Tunisia deal (2023), the EU-Mauritania deal (2024), the EU-Lebanon deal (2024) and the EU-Egypt partnership with focus on migration (2024).

In March 2025, the European Commission published a proposal for a revision of the 2008 Return Directive, thereby altering the EU’s legal framework on returns and deportations outside of the EU (Amnesty International, 2025). The new Return Directive is a “central pillar of the Pact on Migration and Asylum (…) The proposal seeks to ensure that when someone is ordered to leave the EU, they will leave the EU, either forcibly or voluntarily if the conditions allow (…) to equip Member States with common rules for identifying and speeding up the return of third-country nationals posing a security risk” (EC, 2025:1-3). The proposal suggests the “establishment of ‘return hubs’ in third countries and foresees a significant expansion of the possible countries to which third-country nationals can be returned against their will beyond their country of origin” (ECRE, 2025). As part of the proposal, EU member states are also obliged to recognize and enforce the return decision issued by another EU member state, should an application for international protection be rejected (idem). While return hubs have been a consistent practice within EU border management, particularly in border states such as Croatia, their formal integration into the directive can be interpreted as a step toward serious human rights violations. Arguably, return hubs would function as a means to shift responsibility and to outsource the asylum process, accompanied by a lack of formal mechanisms for ensuring compliance with human rights standards, while enabling the prolongation of detention of vulnerable forced migrants. Abysmal conditions in return hubs have long been recorded by human rights organizations: the proposed directive is more than worrisome, especially when considering the return hubs’ integral role in the systematic and forced transfer and expulsion of specific populations and their potential transformation into ‘rights-free zones’ (Patteri, 2025). Furthermore, the new directive significantly limits the options for voluntary return, expands the grounds for detention, introduces new grounds and extended durations for entry bans and weakens procedural safeguards (the suspensive effect of appeals will not be automatic, potentially allowing removal before an appeal is heard) and access to legal remedies and assistance for third-country nationals (ECRE, 2025).

A clear takeaway from the proposed Return Directive: deportation as a policy priority is further codified into EU legislation and migration management is becoming successively disproportional and punitive, exacerbating the vulnerability and human rights violations endured by forced migrants. This culminates in a migration management regime that prioritizes securitization, detention and acceleration of forced expulsion over compliance and accountability vis-à-vis fundamental human rights. We can detect parallels between EU efforts to creative a dehumanizing migration policy that frames migration as a threat and the Trump Administration’s aggressive approach toward migration, namely captured in various executive orders introduced at the federal level, such as ‘Protecting the American People Against Invasion’, ‘Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship’, ‘Securing Our Borders’, and ‘Realigning the United States Refugee Admission Program’ (CMS, 2025). The Trump Administration is pursuing a policy of mass arrests and deportations by providing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with extensive resources (14.4 billion dollars) to carry out removals. Clearly, cross-border movement is increasingly criminalized, on a transnational level. This contributes to and fuels widespread xenophobia, intensifies the precarity and vulnerability of multiply marginalized forced migrants and creates a system in which human rights are discarded and asylum law is being gradually eroded.

For LGBTQI+ asylum seekers and refugees, these developments have significant consequences: the prioritization of deportation, as facilitated by the new EU Return Directive, puts them at high risk of experiencing violence, persecution and criminalization if/when their asylum application is rejected. Queer asylum seekers and refugees are exposed to intersecting forms of violence and discrimination on the grounds of their sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression and sex characteristics. Their dehumanization within heteronormative spaces, as queer persons, but also their expulsion and deportability, as forced migrants, creates complex power structures in which they are continuously victimized, on a social, legal, and political level. Furthermore, LGBTQI+ forced migrants are often subjected to high rates of border violence during their migration journey, including being coerced into performing sexual favors in order to be allowed to cross the border, sustaining physical abuse, and being pathologized on the grounds of their queer identity. With the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum and the proposed EU Return Directive, queer forced migrants are now finding themselves in extremely precarious situations, where their livelihood, mental and physical health and legal status are severely compromised, in Sweden and on the EU level. Namely, the return hubs, as proposed by the new Return Directive, exacerbate the already existing vulnerabilities of queer forced migrants in migration accommodation centers: until now, no safe accommodation centers which respond to the specific needs of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers, in particular intersex and transgender asylum seekers, exist in Sweden. As a result, queer forced migrants often face further harassment, discrimination and abuse in accommodation centers, which puts a heavy strain on their mental health and safety and is likely to retraumatize them. Normalizing deportations as part of the EU migration and asylum policy and expelling forced migrants to return hubs where human rights violations are unlikely to be properly monitored and intercepted has serious and life-threatening implications for the most vulnerable of the community, namely LGBTQI+ forced migrants.

By Kaja Simmen

References

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Center for Migration Studies (CMS). 2025. Summary of Executive Orders and other Actions on Immigration. [Online]. Available at: https://cmsny.org/publications/essential-but-ignored-low-earning-immigrant-healthcare-workers-and-their-role-in-the-health-of-new-york-city/ (Last Accessed: August 25, 2025).

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