Deportation

“Voluntary” returning from Hungary to Serbia:

The latest practice of “voluntary” return to Serbia caused that a huge number of asylum seekers cancel their asylum claim in Hungary and afterwards got deported to Serbia via the bilateral readmission agreement. They were blackmailed with long term detention up to 6 month or even 18 month in order to convince them to “voluntarily” return to Serbia. After their deportation they are again imprisoned for (usually) another 5 days in Subotica town prison. With the release from the prison they receive a paper telling them to leave the country within 10 days. There is a possibility for them to (again) seek asylum in Serbia, but also a danger of chain-deportations further to Macedonia, as it happened earlier.

Important notice for people who has been fingerprinted in Hungary without seeking asylum and have come back to Serbia: According to the Dublin-Convention the fingerprints will only be cancelled if you can PROVE (which is very difficult!) that you were out of the Dublin-area for more than 3 months! So remark that the so-called police-fingerprints in the first country of entry of Dublin still are working against you if you just return to Serbia only for some days and then go to a Dublin country again (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Principality of Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom).

Deportations from Serbia to a country of origin don’t happen that often. Mostly, people get a paper on which it is written that they have to leave the country within 10 days. Anyway it happend aswell that people who wanted to enter Serbia through airport get often denied to seek for asylum and face detention in the airport and get forced to travel back. Not many people are aware about that, in case you are in this situation try to get in contact with a lawyer.

Serbia does not practice detention of asylum seekers and there is only one detention center, which function as a deportation center (i.e. therein are detained migrants, awaiting deportation). Officially this detention centre is called ”Reception centre for foreigners” (Prihvatilište za Strance) and it is located in Padinska Skela near to the capital Belgrade. The maximum detention time in the deportation centre is up to 90 days. This can be prolonged, in case the identity of the person has not been ascertained, the person intentionally „prevent“ his/her own deportation. The total duration of detention should not be longer than 180 days.