Belgian plan for ICE-style immigration raids on homes criticised as ‘law of fear’

The Belgian parliament has approved a controversial law that allows police to forcibly enter private homes to remove undocumented migrants, a measure rights groups have warned will echo the US crackdown on immigration.

The new legislation, approved by the ruling right-leaning coalition last Friday, grants the Belgian immigration office the power to request an investigating judge’s authorisation to enter residences that may be housing anyone without papers.

Once a warrant is obtained, police will be able to enter people’s homes without consent between 5am and 9pm, potentially in the presence of children, and can detain people and carry out searches for identity documents.

The law is set to take effect next spring and is aimed at people who have been denied asylum in Belgium, ignored orders to leave, or are seen as a threat to public order or national security.

“It’s a law of fear,” said Carine Thibaut, the director of Amnesty International’s French-speaking Belgian section, citing the impact the raids could have on children and on people who had opened their homes to migrants. “It really disseminates fear.”

A broad range of critics have argued that the law is vague on what constitutes a public threat, citing cases where these terms were used for people who had carried out undeclared work, run a red light or shoplifted.

This means it will be up to individual judges to determine whether private homes can be turned into sites of immigration enforcement, a process that rights groups say lacks sufficient safeguards.

Amnesty International, which is among 20 rights groups that have warned against the law, claims the judges would not have full investigative powers and are limited on who they can ask for additional information.

The legislation also fails to provide a means for people to appeal or challenge any decisions that are made, a point of contention for legal experts and advocacy groups.

“They always say it’s for criminals,” Thibaut said. “We always answer that they already have all the tools to address this problem, because they can do that through the normal justice system.”

The view was echoed at the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, known as Picum, where advocacy officer Chiara Catelli argued the raids have nothing to do with people who have committed crimes.

“It’s really about wanting to return people, deporting people, which is an administrative procedure,” Catelli said.

Catelli noted that similar, hardline measures are already in place in countries such as the Netherlands and Germany, and warned that the EU’s recently approved returns regulation, aimed at ramping up deportations across the bloc, includes similar provisions.

She added that other member states could soon adopt comparable measures, saying, “We’re really afraid that this is the beginning of something that will become more widespread.”

Thibaut warned that the measures would gradually chip away at the rights of everyone, arguing that the law perpetuates the conflation of lack of legal status with delinquency.

“The home is inviolable. This constitutional principle should never depend on the administrative status of those who live there,” the rights groups said.

Catelli also drew parallels to the devastating consequences of home raids in the US, where they fuel fear and violence and tear families apart, stating, “It’s deeply alarming that an EU member state is now moving in the same direction.”

Thibaut added that the law could set a precedent for further erosion of rights, saying, “This time it is for people without papers; after that, it might be people who are using drugs.”

She concluded that the measures represent the beginning of reducing the state of law and the respect for human rights, noting, “That’s the way you slowly, slowly dismantle a society based on human rights, on respect for justice and on separation of powers”.