The impoverished Albanian region welcoming Europe’s unwanted migrants
27 October 2024 6:00am GMT
Hardly anything ever happens in Kakariq, a rural village in the northern Albanian countryside where Rexhep and Kristina Tetova live.
So when diggers, trucks and hundreds of workers suddenly started arriving, the couple were stunned.
“They came one day and started to work,” says Rexhep, his grease-blackened hands busy rolling a cigarette with home-grown tobacco. “We had no idea what was going on.”
The construction noise was relentless, day and night for four months. Albanian, Montenegrin and Croatian labourers were hard at work building what human rights activists have called “Europe’s Guantanamo”.
Kakariq now hosts one of two purpose-built detention centres for migrants in Albania – not for those who have arrived in the Balkan country on purpose, but migrants trying to reach Italy who have been relocated.
The detention centre and another facility in the port of Shëngjin are the result of a £560m deal between Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama.
The controversial agreement, which experts say could easily end up costing more than €1bn (£830m), marks the first time an EU country has outsourced its asylum system.
Meloni hopes to process up to 3,000 male asylum seekers a month at the facility for the next five years. Migrants rescued by the Italian coastguard will be transported across the Adriatic Sea to Shëngjin, a 15-minute drive from the detention centre in Kakariq.
Asylum seekers from 19 countries that Rome deems safe will have their claims processed in Albania. They will then theoretically be deported if found to be economic migrants.