The detention of asylum seekers and other migrants in the EU has increased in recent years. But what can migrants actually expect inside such a facility? InfoMigrants visited a deportation detention center in Tallinn, Estonia.
InfoMigrants took a tour of Estonia's only detention center for rejected asylum seekers in September 2024. The small Baltic nation Estonia has one of the lowest apprehension rates of migrants in the EU and often receives the fewest asylum applications per year, with the exception of Ukrainian refugees.
A 2023 monitoring visit by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) attested the facility boasted "very good material conditions".
But things didn't always look so rosy, according to the Estonian Human Rights Center. As recently as last year, it used strategic litigation to win the people detained there the right to use mobile phones. "The Estonian Human Rights Center has significantly contributed to improving the situation of detainees at the detention center by advocating for their human rights in strategic court cases," asylum lawyer Uljana Ponomarjova told InfoMigrants.