Italy formally opens centers in Albania to process male migrants intercepted in international waters

SHENGJIN, Albania — Italy's government on Friday formally opened two centers in Albania where it plans to process male migrants who are intercepted in international waters.

The opening was delayed for several months because crumbling soil at one center needed to be repaired.

Italian Ambassador to Albania Fabrizio Bucci said the two centers are ready to process migrants, but could not say when the first ones would arrive.

''As of today, the two centers are ready and operational,'' Bucci told journalists at the port of Shengjin on Albania's Adriatic coast where the migrants will land.

The centers have capacity to accommodate up to 400 illegal migrants as a start, expected to increase to 880 in a few weeks, according to Italian officials, speaking off the record.

The number of people reaching Italy along the central Mediterranean migration route from North Africa has fallen by 61% in 2024 from 2023. According to the Italian Interior Ministry, as of Oct. 11, 52,425 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea this year, compared to 138,947 by the same date last year.

Under a five-year deal signed last November by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, up to 3,000 migrants picked up by the Italian coast guard in international waters each month will be sheltered in Albania. They will be screened initially on board the ships that rescue them before being sent to Albania for further screening.

The first center, an area in Shengjin, 66 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of the capital, Tirana, will be used for screening newcomers. Housing units, a small hospital, a detention center and offices at the port are surrounded by a metal fence 5 meters (16 feet) high and topped with barbed wire.

The other center, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) to its east near a former military airport in Gjader, will accommodate migrants during the processing of their asylum requests in a roughly 17-acre (7-hectare) site.

The ambassador said that Gjader was the challenge which caused all the delay. Some 7,000 cement pillars went deep into the ground to consolidate the base, following "the same Venice-style" anti-seismic and anti-flooding construction standard, according to Bucci, adding that the center has independence of water supply with two wells and a separate power line.

It has all the Italian standards in construction and the most updated level of security and living standards like all the migrants' camps in Italy, according to Bucci.

The logistics part of the personnel was divided with 5-meter (yard) tall barbed wire fences from the administrative offices, the area where those not granted asylum would stay and the bigger accommodation area, including a penitentiary area providing four-person shelter cells for up to 20 detainees.

The centers will only house adult men, while vulnerable people such as women, children, the elderly and those who are ill or victims of torture will be accommodated in Italy. Families will not be separated.

Adult men made up 74% of migrants arriving in Italy by sea during the first seven months of 2024, according to figures from the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR.

While in Albania, the migrants will retain their right under international and European Union law to apply for asylum in Italy and have their claims processed there.

Each claim is expected to take a maximum of 28 days, including any appeal case, to process. Italy has agreed to welcome those who are granted asylum. Those whose applications are rejected face deportation directly from Albania.

''Respecting human and other rights for the migrants is of top priority,'' said the ambassador.

The agreement was endorsed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as an example of ''out-of-box thinking'' in tackling the issue of migration into the European Union, but has been slammed by human rights groups as setting a dangerous precedent.

Rama has made it clear that no other country will be able to have such centers in Albania. For Italy, they are considered an expression of gratitude for the tens of thousands of Albanians it welcomed with the fall of the communist regime in 1991.

Meloni and her right-wing allies have long demanded that European countries share more of the migration burden. She has held up the Albania agreement as an innovative solution to a problem that has vexed the EU for years.

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Associated Press journalists Giada Zampano and Patricia Thomas, in Rome, contributed to this report.