The chilling reality of life inside an Italian migrant return hub in Albania
Migrant repatriation centres are the latest chapter in the European block’s long effort to try and manage immigration by outsourcing it to third countries. Last March, the European parliament approved a new draft law to establish “return hubs” in third countries, where migrants can be sent against their will.
The logic is simple, if inhumane: speedier repatriations, costs and responsibilities shifted to neighbours with a laxer humanitarian record, and, most of all, a powerful deterrent for those seeking a better life in Europe. But what’s the reality inside these facilities?
In an investigation for the monthly Italian magazine Altreconomia, journalist Luca Rondi takes us inside theCentro di permanenza per il rimpatrio (CPR) in Gjadër, one of two Italian migration facilities in northwestern Albania. The centre opened under a controversial arrangement between the two countries in 2025.
Rondi obtained a document kept secret by the Meloni government for over a year – a logbook of “critical events” kept by staff at the facility that details extensive violence in the first two months of the centre’s opening. According to the document, much of the violence is self-inflicted by migrants as a form of protest against their living conditions.
“At 11:30, a detainee engages in acts of self-harm because he wants a ‘higher dosage of the current treatment’” reads one entry.
“At 10:35 p.m., a detainee threatens ‘to cut his carotid artery with a piece of glass’ … The reason? He wants more psychiatric medication” reads another.
The document logs 54 violent incidents in a 48-day period, including 22 instances of self-harm, 12 of attempted suicide, and 11 of unrest due to poor living conditions.
But these numbers only provide half the story. What sets the Gjadër facility apart from the 11 other “return hubs” on Italian soil is the dodgy legal fiction by which Albania is considered an extraterritorial border zone just like Lampedusa, the infamous island off the coast of Sicily, which is often the first point of entry for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. As the author writes, violence is a mainstay of Italy’s domestic CPRs as well. He cites similar cases of violence, self-harm, and protest in Macomer in Sardinia, San Gervasio in Basilicata, and Bari and Brindisi in Puglia, which show that the frequency of incidents in these facilities is comparable, if not higher.
Rondi also questions the point of all this suffering. Out of the 536 Egyptians sent to Gjadër between April 11, 2025 and April 20, 2026 – mostly as a propaganda stunt “to show to public opinion that those centres were active” – only a few were repatriated to Cairo from Tirana on May 9, 2026. “Everyone else was sent back to Italy, only to be released or repatriated at exorbitant costs and under what remains a legal grey area,” he notes.
According to Silvia Carta, an advocacy officer for Brussel-based NGO Platform of Undocumented Migrants, the viability of these repatriation centres rests on ambiguous legal interpretations. As a result of provisions passed in the recent draft law in the European parliament, a migrant “country of origin” has come to mean any country willing to receive them, irrespective of where they are actually from.
As Europe’s political spectrum takes a swift rightward turn, this malpractice and maltreatment of migrants risks becoming increasingly normalised.
The original article ‘La vita degradante nel CPR in Albania che il governo voleva nascondere’ was published in Italian by Luca Rondi in Altreconomia on June 1, 2026.
Altreconomia is an Italian monthly magazine. Since 1999, it has shone a light on economic alternatives, including fair trade, ethical finance, and the protection of the environment and human rights.
Summary by Bartolomeo Sala
