Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

A twenty-six-year-old detainee had moved to Italy from Ivory Coast with a valid permit to stay
when he was fifteen years old on the basis of family reunification. In A.W. Kahn v the United
Kingdom the ECtHR held that the relationship between settling migrants and their environment
also constitutes an element of private life as protected by Article 8 ECHR. The length of a
person’s stay in Italy must be considered when balancing whether deportation satisfies the
Article 8 ECHR proportionality test; that is, whether deportation is justified because it would
pursue a legitimate aim that is necessary in a democratic society 26 . This twenty-six-year-old
detainee had lived his whole adult life in Italy, and he was distressed at the prospect of being
deported to a country that he has not been to since he was a child: “I don’t want to go back to
Ivory Coast. I have nobody there, I would be completely alone. I have all my family here, all my
friends, all my life is here. It’s more than ten years that I am in Italy. I cannot go back. The day they
put me on a plane for Ivory Coast, it will only happen because I will be dead” (Interview 18). In this
case, the young man had committed crimes in Italy. Therefore, deportation would not
necessarily breach Article 8 ECHR so long as the decision makers have balanced the individual’s
rights against the community’s interests. However, there have been several cases where an
individual’s family life ties and rehabilitative behaviour have been so strong that the ECtHR has
ruled that despite having committed serious crimes it would be a breach of Article 8 ECHR to
deport that person 27 .
In addition, a number of detainees were financially supporting dependant family members
either in Italy or in their countries of origin at the time that they were detained. For example,
one young man in his twenties expressed his stress because he felt that he could not tell his
mother in his country of origin about his detention in CIE. This young man was scared that his
mother would not understand the meaning of CIE, which he said did not exist as a concept in his
country of origin. He feared that his mother might assume that if he was in detention it was a
criminal jail. Prior to being detained in CIE he was working and regularly sending money to his
home country to support his family. He spoke with sadness about how he felt forced into a
position where he needed to lie to his family, telling them that he was not working much in Italy
and that this was why he stopped being able to send money home. In reality, he had stopped
sending home money because he was detained in CIE.
26 In cases where a long-term migrant is facing deportation due to criminal acts, the ECtHR will decide whether
or not Article 8 ECHR has been breached by using a proportionality test of whether there was a proportionately
legitimate aim that was necessary for a democratic society. This proportionality test takes into consideration
factors such as: the length of the applicant’s stay in the country; the nature and seriousness of the offence
committed by the applicant; the time elapsed since the offence and the applicant’s conduct in the interim;
whether the spouse knew about the offence; children of the marriage; seriousness of the issues that the spouse is
likely to face in the country if the applicant is expelled; and difficulties any children of the applicant are likely to
face in the country. These criteria were originally established in Boultif v. Switzerland, 54273/00, Council of
Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 2 August 2001. These criteria were then revisited in Üner v. the
Netherlands, 46410/99, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 18 October 2006 where the
Grand Chamber of the ECtHR added that there were two extra proportionality test criteria that may already be
implicit in Boulif: the best interests and well-being of the children, in particular the seriousness of the difficulties
which any children of the applicant are likely to encounter in the country to which the applicant is expelled; and,
the solidity of social, cultural and family ties with the host country and with the country of destination: Üner v.
the Netherlands, para. 58.
27 Onur v. United Kingdom, 27319/07, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 17 February 2009;
Omojudi v. United Kingdom, 1820/08, Council of Europe: European Court of Human Rights, 24 November
2009; A.W. Khan v. United Kingdom.
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