The European Union is expanding its powers to track, raid and deport migrants to “return hubs” in third countries in Africa and elsewhere, quietly adopting tactics of the Trump administration that have drawn public criticism across the 27-nation bloc.
The EU continues to tighten migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the centre-right European People’s Party coalition, has said the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by the civil war in Syria, when about one million people arrived to seek asylum.
“We have learnt the lessons of the past. And today, we are better equipped,” von der Leyen has said. The new policies, known as the Pact on Migration and Asylum, go into effect on June 12. Far-right parties in Europe have praised the deportation policies of US President Donald Trump and called for the EU to adopt a similar approach. Human rights groups warn that authorities are already illegally pushing back migrants at EU borders and hollowing out their legal protections.
Some in Europe cheer Trump-style tactics: During the Winter Olympics in Italy, protests erupted over the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation. But others in Europe have praised ICE’s actions and called for setting up deportation-focused police units.
The EU border service Frontex began sending officers along on raids with Belgium’s police in 2024 to detain and deport migrants. It is not clear whether it is doing this in other countries.
The European Commission has declined requests to take a position on US federal immigration policies.
Pushbacks, raids and surveillance increase: Under the principle of non-refoulement in EU and international law, a person cannot be returned to a country where they would face persecution.
But European immigration enforcement tactics include so-called pushbacks, where people trying to cross into the EU are forced back across a border without access to asylum procedures.
Authorities in Europe carry out an average of 221 pushbacks a day, according to a February report by a group of humanitarian organisations.
More than 80,000 pushbacks were recorded in 2025, the report said, mostly in Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia.
“Men, women and children — including individuals in critical medical condition — are routinely subjected to beatings, attacks by police dogs, forced stripping, forced river crossings and theft of personal belongings,” according to the report.
European agents are brutalising migrants just like in the US, said Flor Didden, migration policy expert at the Belgian human rights group 11.11.11. Some, like in Greece, even wear masks.
“The images are shocking and the outrage is justified,” he said of the US. “But where is that same moral clarity when European border authorities abuse, rob and let people die?”
Europe still has more protections for migrants: The groups also have recorded an expansion of surveillance technology like drones, thermal cameras and satellites to monitor people on the move.
Other human rights groups warn of a weakening of legal protections.
The EU’s new migration regulations allow for more police raids in private homes and public spaces and more use of surveillance and racial profiling, said a letter to EU institutions in February from 88 nonprofit groups including the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.
“We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe,” said the platform’s director, Michele LeVoy.
Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU migration advocate for Amnesty International, said Europe retains more protections for vulnerable migrants than the United States but shares much of the political momentum toward harsher policies.
“There’s a level of institutions’ and courts’ independence and human rights compliance in Europe that you can’t disregard,” she said. “But the fundamental political impulse is the same, and I worry that the human consequences will be the same.”
