More than 80 NGOs protest against the Return Regulation: No to EU law enabling home raids, policing of public services and racial profiling.

The EU is currently negotiating a Deportation (“Return”) Regulation to expand and normalise immigration raids and surveillance measures across our communities. They want to oblige Member States to “detect” undocumented people – turning everyday spaces, public services, and community interactions into tools of ICE-style immigration enforcement. In the US, this has already led to a public health crisis where undocumented people avoid accessing basic medical care for fear of being reported or kidnapped.

In practice, detection measures proposed by the Commission could result in (and indeed some of them are already happening in various EU member states):

• Police raids in private homes, enabling authorities to enter living spaces to search for undocumented migrants – without a judicial mandate – as well as offices and shelters run by humanitarian organisations.

• Police raids in public spaces – such France’s deployment of 4 000 police agents in June 2025 to carry out sweeping checks across bus and train stations, with the aim to arrest and detain undocumented people, or Belgium’s introduction of internal border checks on highways, stations and airports.

• Surveillance and technology – such as the collection of people’s personal data in bulk and exchanged between police forces across the EU and the use of biometric identification systems to track people’s movements and increase policing of undocumented migrants and racialised people.

• Mandatory reporting obligations imposed on public authorities – such as those that have been imposed on the social welfare office in Germany since the 1990s, or those under discussion in Sweden.

• Racial profiling – Checks and controls based on appearance, language or perceived origin, rather than individual conduct, leading to discriminatory targeting of racialised communities, already a routine practice in Europe.

This threat is real and immediate. The European Commission’s proposal explicitly promotes detection measures and, in December last year1, Member States endorsed a position calling for even more harsh policies, including police raids on private homes to locate undocumented migrants.2 Moreover, most of the political groups in the European Parliament, from the liberals to the far right, have presented amendments that support the mandatory inclusion of detection measures.

Detection measures create fear, discrimination and persecution, and break social ties and communities. They deter people from accessing essential healthcare (including pregnancy-related care, chronic disease treatment and vaccinations), as well as education and social services; trap people in situations of violence, exploitation and abuse; erode trust between professionals and those they serve; enable racial profiling and systemic discrimination; and violate fundamental rights to privacy and data protection.

These risks have been raised at international level. On 26 January, 16 UN Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts, and Working Groups, addressed a joint letter to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council of the EU, warning that the proposed Deportation Regulation may impose reporting duties on professionals, discouraging access to essential services and undermining fundamental rights.

Embedding detection measures in binding EU legislation would fund, legitimise, expand and standardise them across Europe, and legitimise illegal practices like racial profiling. This would consolidate a punitive system, fuelled by far-right rhetoric and based on racialised suspicion, denunciation, detention and deportation. Rather than protecting fundamental rights, the EU is on course to codify an ideology of criminalisation that targets people simply because of their administrative situation.

Europe knows from its own history where systems of surveillance, scapegoating and control can lead.

We call on policymakers, public authorities, public service workers, civil society organisations and communities across Europe to reject detection in all its forms, and to mobilise against policies that criminalise people on the basis of their residence status and erode fundamental rights for all.

The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union must listen to these concerns and reject the Deportation Regulation.

See the original statement on PICUM network website.