Pressure Mounts to Close Italy’s Ponte Galeria Migrant Detention Centre Over Death of African Migrant

Italy’s Ponte Galeria migrant detention centre near Rome is facing pressure to close due to human rights groups’ criticism of the conditions in which undocumented migrants are detained for months without charge. The centres are supposed to be temporary holding facilities for migrants whose asylum bids failed or foreigners who have been ordered expelled for criminal or other reasons while the paperwork is completed to send them home. However, due to bureaucratic delays and a lack of repatriation agreements with countries of origin, only around half of the detainees are actually sent back.

Opposition senators who visited the Ponte Galeria centre recently decried the “undignified” conditions for people ordered to leave Italy but awaiting repatriation. The right-wing government of Premier Giorgia Meloni has defended the use of the centres and called for their expansion as part of a broader strategy to manage Italy’s migration flows.

The Radicali Roma, an association affiliated with the Italian Radical Party, has started an online petition calling on center-left Mayor Roberto Gualtieri to close the Ponte Galeria centre due to repeated episodes of violence, suicide, and protests by desperate detainees. Italy’s national guarantor for the rights of prisoners, Mauro Palma, also weighed in on the issue, stating that any facility that deprives people of their freedom must have a functioning system of registering critical events and medical interventions for violence that results in injury, riots, and attempted escapes to ensure the basic rights of detainees are respected.