Between 4 and 11 January 2019 (8 days), at least 100 migrants were arrested in Zeebruges, Antwerp, on parking places or in trucks, on trains (even though they had train tickets), mainly on the way to the coast.
Fifty of them are being retained in closed centres. Eighteen have been released thanks to urgent appeals to the CCE (Litigation Council) against their retention and/or order to leave the territory. Other releases will follow.
The staff of the centres continue to do the dirty job at the request of their boss, the Foreigners Office.
Social assistants continue threatening them wih deportation as soon as they arrive to the centre and make them believe that if they resort to a lawyer they might not be released.
Unfortunately, some of them believe what social assistants say. As a result, they remain in the centre with no lawyers and after a few weeks they are deported to their Dublin country, or worse, to their country of origin after several months of retention.
For example, after 8 moinths of retention, a woman and a man already had to go through a forced deportation with escort to Ethiopia. One was deported by force this Monday 7 January 2019. We are 13 January and so far we haven’t got any news from her arrival in Addis-Abeba.
Several others have been threatened with deportation to Ethiopia, a country with which the Foreigners Office seems to have found a secret agreement to ease these deportations. One of them already had to go through two deportation attempts and is in a poor state, the third attempt will happen very soon. Be ready! http://www.gettingthevoiceout.org/how-to-stop-a-deportation/
It seems that Ethiopian airlines is the airline that collaborates with these deportations.
Let’s prevent deportations by all means
Let’s free them all!
