NEWS | Wednesday, 18 February 2009

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James Debono
Since 2000 Malta has lost track of 397 irregular migrants held in “closed” detention centres.
This was revealed by Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici who was replying to a parliamentary question by Labour MP Gino Cauchi.
Most of the cases occurred between 2000 and 2005 when Malta faced the first wave of irregular migration and detention centres were less secure than they are now, a ministry spokesperson told MaltaToday.
But the same spokesperson confirmed that a smaller number of migrants have continued to escape from detention centres even in the past year.
“This number represents only a small fraction of the 12,500 immigrants who reached Maltese shores in the past years,” the spokesperson said.
Yet the number of detained migrants disappearing from detention centres could represent only a small fraction of migrants who are disappearing from the country.
According to law, irregular migrants have to be released from detention after 18 months. These migrants generally live in open centres but they have no obligation to live there.
The government has already deported 5,192 immigrants from the 11,273 asylum seekers who came to Malta before October 2008.
A total of 3,241 requests for asylum were turned down in the past six years, but what happens to this category of immigrant afterwards remains a mystery.
The government has no statistics on the number of failed asylum seekers who have been in Malta for more than a year. A spokesperson for the ministry had said that “this statistic is not available.”
MaltaToday is reliably informed that asylum seekers, both rejected or those given temporary humanitarian (or subsidiary) protection, have been issued with travel documents to visit family members in other countries.
But once these asylum seekers arrive on mainland Europe, they seldom return back to Malta, where they see no hope of making a living, or integrating into the community. Failed asylum seekers and those given temporary protection also manage to ‘slip through the net’ by once again being smuggled out of Malta, and into Italy.

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