Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

deportation order, information from the embassy, documents or any other reason. They do
it more or less after six months” (Interview 7).
There is strong evidence that Article 15(4) of EU Directive 2008/115/EC is being frequently
ignored by Italian authorities, as exemplified in cases where irregular migrants are put inside
CIE more than once even when it had not been possible to identify them during their first period
of CIE detention:
“There are migrants who have already been inside CIE three or four times and who have
always been released because their embassy is not able to identify them” (Interview 28);
“For example, I have a client who is currently detained in CIE and this is her third time
inside CIE. But if you couldn’t repatriate her on either the first time or the second one, how
can you put her inside CIE for a third time? Why do you detain her? It is only to increase
the number of detainees because they [Questura] know that they will never be able to
repatriate her. Serbia didn’t recognise her as a Serbian citizen, she has no birth certificate,
she has no documents at all. They [Questura] continue asking the Serbian consulate for
identification, even though I’ve already provided them with a declaration by the Serbian
consulate where it is stated that she does not appear in their records. But they keep
insisting” (Interview 8).
A revealing element emerged from our detainee interviews: only one out of seventeen detainees
replied affirmatively when asked whether he had ever met diplomatic or consular
representatives from his country of origin during his period of detention inside CIE.
Furthermore, our only interviewee to have met with consular officials, “X”, has a revealing story
to tell. At the time we interviewed X he was inside CIE detention and he had been detained for
approximately seven months. Moreover, before arriving in CIE X had also served a sentence of
thirteen months imprisonment and no identification procedure was started during that period.
Three months after X entered CIE, the Moroccan consular representatives went to visit him. X
told us they spoke about the place he comes from and about sending his documents from
Morocco to Italy. Yet, strangely enough, it seems the Moroccan representatives did not talk to X
about the authorisation for his repatriation at all. On the contrary: “they told me at the end of this
month or next month maximum they [Italian authorities] would release me, but not sending me
back to Morocco, just setting me free” (Interview 19). This is the only direct account we have of a
meeting with consular representatives inside Turin’s CIE.
The lack of cooperation between Italian and foreign authorities evidently affects detainees by
increasing their feelings of uncertainty because they rarely know if and when their very own
embassy or consulate will aid in the identification process. In addition, it generates a sense of
disappointment towards their own representatives who, from the detainees’ perspective, have
simply left them inside the CIE without even trying to help them out. It seems that often, after a
few months of detention, a number of detainees would simply like to go back to their home
country. However, it appears that complex political issues are at stake and play a crucial role in
the implementation of return decisions.
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