A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Italy's right-wing government has passed a new law so it can proceed with plans to process migrants' asylum claims in offshore detention centers in neighboring Albania.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Yeah, this follows a legal decision in Rome last week, ordering the first group of individuals who had been sent to Albania under the policy back to Italy. The plan places Italy at the heart of an immigration debate that is roiling Europe.
MARTÍNEZ: For more, we're joined by journalist Willem Marx, who is reporting this morning from the Albanian port town of Shengjin, where more migrants are expected to arrive in the coming days. Willem, tell us about the detention center where you are.
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: Well, A, the one I can see right now in Shengjin is kind of a large site right inside the city's port. It's been purpose-built to process and accommodate hundreds of migrants at a time. The idea the right-wing Italian government of Giorgia Meloni has had is to pick up people who are attempting to cross from North Africa to the island south of Sicily and, in some cases, to bring them directly to Albania if it's possible, since space and resources on the Italian mainland have been so stretched by the large number of recent arrivals.
And the government here in Albania has agreed to accommodate up to 3,000 migrants at a time while their claims for asylum are processed. And here's the twist. The entire detention center - that the Italians are calling a migrant hub - it's going to be staffed and managed entirely by Italians. It's kind of like an embassy. The land itself I'm looking at legally constitutes Italian sovereign territory.
MARTÍNEZ: So why has this plan so far struggled to get off the ground, to get going?
MARX: Well, last week, the Italian authorities sent 16 individuals to Albania on a coast guard vessel. Before it even arrived, four of those on board were excluded. Two were deemed vulnerable. Two were underage. The remaining 12 people from Egypt and Bangladesh were then checked into the facility here in Shengjin before being moved on to another center inland. But their detention in Albania was challenged by lawyers at a migration court back in Rome. And within a couple of days, the judges there made a ruling that all 12 detainees should be returned to Italy.
The judges relied on a very recent ruling by a European court earlier this month that essentially said governments can't decide that countries are safe for asylum-seekers to be returned to if even some parts of those countries - like Bangladesh, like Egypt - are considered dangerous. And so in response to that ruling, the Italian government passed this new decree Monday hoping to override all this, giving itself power to designate specific countries as safe, which means we could expect more arrivals here in the next few days.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So then what comes next for this plan?
MARX: Well, the Italians have already committed hundreds of millions of dollars to these centers. I'm looking at this huge complex of buildings in front of me. It represents at least some of that budget. The Albanians are hoping local businesses will see economic benefits if they can supply food and goods to the authorities here.
There is some opposition to the plan in Albania. And more broadly, this is just the latest attempt to kind of confront this challenge that's bedeviled Europe for more than a decade now. You've got the number of people entering Europe across the central Mediterranean route. That's the one into southern Italy. That's actually fallen this year. And that's thanks in part, the U.N. says, to a perception that the Italians are getting tougher on asylum-seekers. You've got Britain's efforts to use Rwanda in a similar way. That's been shelved after years of judicial struggles. Other countries also encountering difficulties, even though European leaders have recently agreed the process for speeding up these kinds of irregular migrants needs to really happen soon.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That is journalist Willem Marx. Willem, thank you very much for this report.
MARX: Thanks, A.
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