Fringe figures want to follow the Trump playbook for tackling unauthorized migration.
Some European far-right parties and politicians have sparked a backlash by calling for a police force in their countries resembling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE, which enforces federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration, has been mired in controversy after its agents killed two U.S. citizens in recent weeks, amid a push by the Trump administration to deport unauthorized immigrants.
That has not deterred the Bavarian branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang party from proposing police units that resemble ICE, in calls that have stoked an outcry from political opponents.
In January, the Bavarian arm of the AfD said it would put forward plans in regional parliament for a police unit focused on deporting immigrants who have entered the country illegally, as part of an array of steps to curb unauthorized immigration, according to an internal party document reported by German media.
“In addition to state-run deportation flights, we are calling for the creation of an asylum, investigation, and deportation unit within the Bavarian police,” the AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner said. The Bavarian Police Union said there is no legal basis for a deportation unit.
Belgium’s Vlaams Belang plans to submit a proposal for a similar police unit in the coming days. While MP Francesca Van Belleghem rejected the comparison with ICE because, she said, the Belgian unit would remain part of the existing police and not a separate federal agency, the details of the plan suggest otherwise: Specialized officers in every police zone, full units in major cities and border areas, and agents actively hunting unauthorized immigrants.
“Instead of only registering illegal immigrants when they are caught by chance, the unit would actively search for persons without legal status,” Van Belleghem told POLITICO, adding: “We do not allow our national proposals to be dictated by the international context.”
In France, meanwhile, far-right firebrand and Reconquête party founder Éric Zemmour did not rule out the idea when asked in a TV interview whether France should have a police force similar to ICE. “It would need to be adapted to France and to French institutions. But we’ll have to be ruthless,” Zemmour told BFMTV.
Political scientist Laura Jacobs from the University of Antwerp said that some far-right parties are careful and avoid association with Trump as it could hurt their image, but “are indeed referring to [a] similar police force.”
“This fits within a broader trend … where strict measures and anti-immigration stances have become normalized, with far-right parties pushing the boundaries” inspired by Trump’s policies, Jacobs said.
The far-right parties’ calls have been met with criticism from political opponents.
People who promote such ideas “fell off the democratic spectrum and can never be normalized,” said German MEP Damian Boeselager from the Greens party.
The Left’s co-president in the European Parliament, Manon Aubry, said: “Far-right policies form part of a continuum of violence that must be challenged from the outset, or else risk becoming generalized. If we even accept ICE model as part of the political debate, the fight is already lost.”
The EU has been hardening its migration policy in an attempt to counter the rise of far-right parties. Last month, the European Commission presented a five-year migration strategy, stressing “assertive migration diplomacy” to push third countries to help stop unauthorized immigrants from entering Europe and to take back citizens who are not entitled to stay.