Turin's CIE - International University College of Turin

administratively entered onto official records. This is a striking violation of both the letter and
spirit of international guarantees for asylum seekers 173 . Even reapplication does not halt
deportation and the overwhelming impression that the CIE authorities have about those
applying for asylum is that they are lying: “It is like this because some of the stories have nothing
to do with political asylum but sometimes the problem is not with the stories. Sometimes they are
real asylum seekers but they [the CIE authorities] do not understand, they think that they
[detainees] are all liars. They are all treated like liars” (Interview 8).
Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest a racial and national classification of irregular
entrants and migrants, which violates the fundamental principle against a group-identity based
denial of asylum claims. The theory and the practice of claiming asylum is starkly different:
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“It works like this when you arrive in Lampedusa: if you are Black they make you apply for
asylum, if you are Arab they take you to CIE. In recent years there has been a true racial
separation. From the theoretical point of view, according to the law if you apply for asylum
at the border you will be taken to CARA [reception centre for asylum seekers], while if you
do not apply for asylum and you are issued a rejection order or a return decision you will
be taken to CIE. If you apply for asylum after you received a rejection order or return
decision, that is after you entered CIE, then you have to stay inside CIE until a decision is
made by the relevant Commission. Meanwhile your removal is suspended.
But from the practical point of view it works in a different way. In 2011, 25,000 Tunisian
migrants arrived in Italy and in addition there were migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
When boats were coming from Libya it was decided that those people could apply for
political asylum. On those boats there were people from Nigeria and from Mali who had
never thought about Italy, they were fleeing a war and they did not even know what an
application for asylum was. The UNHCR was responsible for dividing those who could
apply from those who could not. If on the same boats there was a Tunisian guy, given the
fact that there is a well-working repatriation agreement between Italy and Tunisia, he was
directly taken to CIE. Arab people were not allowed to apply for asylum. If they wanted to,
they could do it from inside CIE.
[…] So, there are people who are arbitrarily directed towards the asylum procedure, when
such procedure will end up in a refusal. There has been a certain approximation in dealing
with these procedures. There have been serious cases in 2011. There have been Tunisian
migrants who applied for political asylum the moment they crossed the border. The
UNHCR did its job properly but then the Prefettura of Lampedusa did not formalise the
application. And this is a very serious episode” (Interview 28).
Another case which calls into question the way that asylum procedure is conducted is a recent
experience that a lawyer recounted whereby owing to administrative lachesse an asylum claim
almost failed to be heard. The manner in which the whole incident occurred suggests endemic
problems with the way the Italian asylum system is operating:
On 28 April 2012, “Y” was brought to Turin’s CIE after receiving a deportation order. Y is a
Nigerian citizen who fled from Kaduna’s riots in 2002 and whose immediate application for
asylum had been rejected. On 30 April 2012, Turin’s Giudice di Pace validated Y’s detention and
173 “Also, for example, if I am inside the CIE and I ask the Red Cross to make a request for political asylum,
from the moment I make this request to the moment they bring me to the Immigration Office inside the camp to
formalise the request, one week, ten days, two weeks can pass. During this week I have no guarantee and I can
be deported. You are not protected until you formalise your request. If there is a lawyer who comes and says,
well, there is my client who wants to ask for it [asylum], okay, they will write [it] in the Immigration Office but
if there is no lawyer then there is no guarantee” (Interview 7).