Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

“Your repatriation does not depend on you, but on your embassy [or] consulate. It depends
on the fact that it recognises you as its own citizen. If you give your true personal details it
is easier to be quickly repatriated but everything depends on your embassy. It has to give
its authorisation for your repatriation, this means it has to check and identify you as its
own citizen. But this is not easy because some people are not registered at all, for example
those who come from the countryside” (Interview 28).
Our interviews with professionals and volunteers at Turin’s CIE revealed a systematic lack of
cooperation from several embassies and consulates. On the one hand, some consulates seem to
accept their involvement in the identification procedure but nevertheless it was alleged that
they still tend to delay the recognition of their citizens as much as possible. For others, there can
be genuine practical difficulties hampering the identification process, as highlighted by the
abovementioned interview (Interview 28). On the other hand, we received allegations that some
consulates and embassies completely refuse any kind of cooperation with Italian authorities,
albeit not in an explicit manner. The reasons for such a choice are usually of a political nature:
“Also, there are particular cases. For example, in Modena’s CIE I was told: “we do not host
Chinese people because their embassy does not cooperate, if it does not help us identifying
them, we cannot repatriate them”” (Interview 28);
“If Italy allocates money for inspections at sea, patrol boats, etc. the country collaborates,
but if you do not give anything in return the embassies do not cooperate. Moldova and
Ukraine, for example, work slowly” (Interview 4).
The situation appears to be particularly frustrating for detainees who have been taken to CIE
after having served a prison sentence 136 . Undeniably, from the detainees’ perspectives there is a
lack of efficiency and insufficient cooperation between their consulates and embassies and the
Italian authorities who manage criminal and administrative detention:
“Some consulates do not send anyone to identify their citizens, neither in jail nor inside CIE.
They do not send any officials, documents, certificates or fingerprints. For example, the
Egyptian consulate- I don’t know nowadays, but in the past they never went to jail or CIE
to identify migrants who reported to be Egyptian nationals. So, in some cases these
migrants remained in jail for years and all that time nobody went there to identify them
[...]. But in order to be repatriated they must be identified, so they are detained inside CIE
up to eighteen months only for the purpose of identification. And I really do not understand
the reason why their own country of origin does not help them to get out of it, to get out of
CIE. Detainees themselves suffer very much for this reason because they usually have very
good relationships with their consulates and they do not understand why those who are
supposed to help and protect them do not do it” (Interview 1).
Moreover, Article 15(4) of EU Directive 2008/115/EC provides that a detainee should be
released from CIE when it becomes evident that for some reason the return decision issued
against him cannot be enforced. Thus, if it becomes apparent that a detainee will never be
identified by a given country because that country simply does not process identification
requests, then the detainee in question should be released because the initial reason justifying
their detention no longer exists. From our interviews we discovered that while this sometimes
occurs, it is only after a considerable period of time has elapsed:
“The rule says that you should not detain a person if you see that there is no chance that
you can identify him or deport him. You can release him after it is not possible to obtain his
136 See Part B. Conditions of Detention, Chapter III. Prison and CIE.
73 | P a g e