Over the past half a year, an almost 1,100 expulsion mandates have been handed to those seeking asylum, alongside the progression of setting up charter planes to facilitate removals. The Government’s ongoing endeavour to enforce strict immigration policies has resulted in a rise in these mandates.
Simon Harris, the Taoiseach, has repeatedly announced throughout this year the necessity for more efficient processing periods and successful repatriations of asylum seekers lacking the right to reside in the State. Assuming the present trend persists, the State could see an unprecedented volume of expulsion orders – potentially more than 2,000 in 2024. This figure would be the peak in the last quadrennial.
Compared to the same timeframe in the previous year, enforced repatriations have risen by 128 per cent, and voluntary returns have increased by 157 per cent as of mid-July.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) undertakes probing to verify if people have indeed left the State. In the instances where this isn’t the case, they coordinate with the Department of Justice to ensure deportations.
In 2023, the GNIB assisted in the removal of 52 individuals who were subject to expulsion orders, marking a 100 per cent increment as compared to 2022. According to the Department of Justice, the level of execution is still rising this year, with the GNIB facilitating the removal of 65 individuals with expulsion orders as of 17th July.
By mid-July, the department issued approximate 1,067 expulsion orders. For the whole of 2023, 948 deportation orders were issued, while in 2022, the number stood at 270.
Up until mid-July this year, there has been a total of 303 voluntary returns among asylum seekers, raising the cumulative number of returns to 397 for the year so far.
The Ministry of Justice revealed that along with the obligated expulsions and those that have been confirmed to have departed, a “considerably larger group” had adhered to the instruction to vacate and silently exited the country without notifying the ministry. Nonetheless, the lack of systematic border checks in Ireland to validate everyone’s departure from the country means that it’s not feasible to precisely determine the total figure.
The government is also actively developing plans for arranging charter flights to facilitate future deportations. This is expected to commence later in the year as the procurement procedures for this are in the “advanced stages”. It is likely this will notably enhance the volume of deportations since the bureau usually uses commercial airlines for such endeavours.