Italy's latest eviction of a building used as a makeshift shelter in its northeastern port city of Trieste by a large number of migrants was carried out on January 29. The prefect's office said in a press release that the eviction in the Porto Vecchio area "will make it possible to take into care a total of 95 asylum seekers who had found temporary shelter in the dilapidated buildings in the area".

"Of them, about 20 had already filed asylum requests in the surrounding areas. The others expressed the desire to request international protection today following identification procedures by the police," it added.

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How the eviction was carried out

The asylum seekers in the area, the prefect's office said, "thanks in part to the presence of UNHCR personnel, were duly informed of the operations underway and on the possibility to receive hospitality in the [state-provided] reception facilities] CAS. They were given medical examinations by personnel from the local health authority."

Afterwards, the prefect's office added, "they were accompanied on coaches provided by the prefect's office to reach their destination. All were provided with refreshments." The areas evicted were then cleaned.

The January 29 operation came on the heels of a similar one the previous week that led to 116 asylum seekers being taken into care.

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ICS criticises

The Italian Consortium of Solidarity, Refugee Office NGO (ICS) criticised the eviction: "As has already happened in the prior evictions, the operation was carried out without clear and transparent criteria, and involved both asylum seekers who had already received an invitation from the police headquarters and people just been identified."

"No criteria in terms of the time they had been here were respected," it added. "And even more serious, fragile cases were not given priority."

"Families were not all received" into state care, it stressed.

"Two nuclear families were excluded, even though they had already been reported to the prefect's office at the beginning of the week as situations of particular vulnerability."

ICS noted that the families were taken into care after complaints. "Once again, intervention has become management based on a showy emergency mentality, not respecting basic rights," it added.

"The warehouses of Porto Vecchio continue to be evicted without adequate solutions," the press release noted. "About a dozen asylum seekers have arrived daily in the past few weeks. This is an entirely manageable number. There would simply be a need to organise orderly transfers of larger numbers and provide basic facilities to prevent people from being forced to sleep in the streets. But the mediatisation of migration is a conscious choice by the local and national managerial class to maintain an emergency narrative and evade the responsibility to provide structural solutions."

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Brothers of Italy praises

An opposite reaction to the eviction was Nicole Matteoni, MP and Trieste provincial secretary of the Brothers of Italy party. "At 7:30 AM this morning, the latest eviction in the Porto Vecchio area of Trieste was carried out. A total of 95 migrants were taken into care, and now procedures will be conducted to move them to other facilities. In addition, two dilapidated warehouses were closed to ensure safety in the area," he noted.

"This morning's operation was the latest carried out skillfully by the forces of order in coordination with the Trieste prefect's office. This highlights ever more how the problem of irregular immigration in our city is one given the full attention of the institutions, which provide concrete and constant responses," he added, thanking the various security forces involved in the operation.

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