Migration: More People Prosecuted For Helping Migrants In 2024

Forbes

29-04-2025

Disembarking operations from the ship Geo Barents on December 11, 2022 in Salerno, Italy. (Photo by ... More)
Figures from a new report show that more people were prosecuted around Europe in 2024 for rendering assistance to irregular migrants than in previous years. Such 'criminalization' is becoming more common, as the EU's leadership and individual member states try to crack down on irregular migration.
In the final episode of Seinfeld, the gang are hauled in front of a small town judge for failing to help someone that was visibly in distress, violating as they did the town's 'Good Samaritan' law. In a case of life not so much imitating art as inverting it, ever more people are being prosecuted for exactly the opposite: helping someone in need. It's a relatively novel crime known as migrant 'facilitation.'
The specific charges that relate to helping irregular migrants differ between individual member states, though many states' laws derive from the EU's 2002 'Facilitation Directive.' Activities that could be considered 'facilitation' under individual member state and EU law include rescuing or aiding people in distress at sea, driving them across a border or providing them with food, clothing or shelter. Increasingly, humanitarian aid is also being targeted, with five people currently facing charges of facilitation in Poland for distributing aid.
Sometimes 'facilitation' can mean the very act of crossing a border oneself. That is to say, asylum seekers and other irregular migrants are themselves prosecuted for taking part in their own journey, whether that be some kind of active participation (say being compelled to steer a boat or distribute food and water to companions), or merely 'facilitating' one's own crossing of a border – which is to say crossing it.
Such prosecutions are becoming increasingly common around Europe and the United Kingdom, as political pressure mounts on governments to reduce the amount of people arriving in Europe, outside of normal channels, in order to seek shelter. These policymakers are often unable to pull more direct policy levers, such as just closing borders or summarily deporting people, given EU and international legal law (though these levers are often pulled informally). Instead, wealthy nations are turning to a raft of other measures intended to deter people from attempting to reach Europe, as well as disrupting the operations of those people trying to help them.
'Across Europe, member states have targeted individuals and NGOs providing non-profit humanitarian assistance - such as food, shelter, medical care, or legal advice - with criminal investigations and prosecutions,' reads a recent policy statement from Amnesty International.
The latest report from Brussels-based charity the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM), looking into the prevalence of such 'criminalizations' around Europe, shows they are indeed increasing. In 2024, at least 142 people faced judicial proceedings for helping or rescuing irregular migrants in some form. This number – very likely to be an undercount- is up from the 117 people recorded as criminalized in 2023, and the 89 people between January 2021 and March 2022.
'This is the fourth year in a row that we document increasing levels of criminalization of both migrants and people who help them,' said PICUM advocacy officer Silvia Cara. 'And what we're able to monitor is just the tip of the iceberg.'
An Italian police officer stands by the Iuventa rescue ship run on August 4, 2017. Italian ... More authorities impounded the Iueventa on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration, police said. The crew were acquitted in 2024. (Photo credit BELLINA FRANCESCO/AFP via Getty Images)
The lion's share of criminalizations were for helping people in distress at sea. This is unsurprising given the focus in recent years on the search-and-rescue NGOs working in the Mediterranean. In recent years – and in particular since the period of high irregular migration across various parts of the Mediterranean beginning in 2015 – a loose group of charity rescue organizations has emerged, known informally as the 'civil fleet,' to fill the gap left when EU state rescue patrols ended.
In the years since, the various rescue boats of the civil fleet – operating within international maritime law – have brought tens of thousands of asylum seekers to European shores, much to the chagrin of leaders such as Italy's Giorgia Meloni, who was elected on a largely anti-migration platform. Italy and Greece tend to receive the majority of irregular arrivals and both governments have pursued various tactics to disrupt the operation of NGOs and other groups working to support people seeking shelter, as well as prosecuting individual migrants. In Greece, migrants prosecuted under 'facilitation' laws in fact make up the second largest prison population in the entire country, with thousands locked up or awaiting trial.
The United Kingdom – though not included in this PICUM report – is another clear example of the criminalization strategy. In recent years hundreds of people – including dozens of minors – have been prosecuted under new or augmented laws for 'facilitating' their own or others' journeys. People prosecuted under such laws face heavy sentences and are all but guaranteed deportation if convicted.
The PICUM report also highlights some emergent avenues for criminalization. For instance, 17 people were charged in 2024 for taking part in protests or demonstrations in support of irregular migrants, without apparently having any direct contact with them. NGOs working on irregular migration have long feared being accused of 'facilitation' for providing information on, for instance, the European asylum system. These 17 prosecutions add weight to the idea that merely supporting someone's right to seek asylum could be considered a crime.
The PICUM report shows the impact the trend towards criminalization is having on European civil society and individual migrants, accompanied as it is by other measures such as non-administrative sanctions and disruption targeting solidarity organizations. NGOs and civil society groups have long decried such practices, not least as they often constrain groups trying to rescue people in distress, plausibly leading to a higher death toll along some of Europe's most dangerous migration routes.
'The criminalization of solidarity with migrants is deeply tied with the criminalization of migration itself,' said PICUM's Silvia Carta. 'These are (…) migration policies that make border crossing unsafe and create a hostile environment against those who are considered to have entered in an irregular manner.'
Despite civil society resistance, the EU plans to increase the use of criminalization as a tool for reducing migration. The EU's 'Facilitation Directive,' mentioned previously, will soon be getting an update. The new directive, proposed by the European Commission in 2023, will likely provide a framework for individual member states to further prosecute people who directly assist, or simply interact in some way with, irregular migrants. As well as humanitarian workers, and migrants themselves, anyone who engages in a financial transaction with people on their journey (think taxi drivers, shopkeepers, hotel owners) could be targeted.
Amid this legislative push for an updated facilitation directive, and absent any easing of concerns over irregular migration in Europe, it appears likely that next year's report will show even more people prosecuted for this novel offense.