A ship from the Italian navy carrying 49 migrants picked up in international waters arrived in Albania on Tuesday, as the government in Rome continues its attempts to push ahead with its plan to relocate migrants.
The Cassiopea arrived at the port of Shengjin early on Tuesday.
The migrants will now be identified at a facility at the port before being moved to a holding center in Gjader, around 12 miles away.
So far, the Italian navy has not provided any details about the migrants.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration has built two reception centers in Albania under a first-of-its-kind deal by a European Union nation to divert migrants to a non-EU country to curb sea arrivals from North Africa.
But the facilities have sat empty since November 2024 after Roman judges called the validity of the relocation plan into question and ordered the first two ship-loads of migrants previously detained to be moved back across the Adriatic Sea to Italian soil.
Meloni’s relocation scheme, which she views as central to her aim of curbing illegal immigration, was affected by a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling last year, which was unrelated to Italy.
The Court said no nation of origin could be considered safe if even just a part of it was dangerous, undermining Rome’s idea of deporting migrants to Albania who hailed from a selected list of “safe” countries with a view to swiftly repatriate them.
The cases of the two previous batches of migrants have been referred to the ECJ and are set to be heard on Feb. 25.
Ilaria Salis, a European Parliament deputy from Italy’s Greens and Left Alliance party, criticized the Meloni government on Monday for forcibly transferring whom she called “innocent people fleeing war and misery” despite violations of international law and human rights.
Since the start of 2025, almost 3,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in Italy, more than double the number in the same period last year, when 1,305 arrived.
Last year, 66,317 illegal immigrants arrived in Italy, a drop of 58 percent from 2023.
Most of the arrivals were from Bangladesh, Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt, according to the Interior Ministry in Rome.
Illegal immigration has become a wedge issue across Europe, prompting many nations to introduce stricter controls and tougher policies, with Italy’s fledgling Albanian solution the most high-profile scheme currently underway.
Last year, Meloni called the scheme an example for the rest of Europe, and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said 15 other countries on the continent have taken an interest in the operation.
Under the five-year, 670 million euro ($730 million) agreement between Rome and Tirana, up to 3,000 migrants intercepted by the Italian coast guard in international waters each month can be held in Albania, where they will be vetted for asylum in Italy or sent back to their countries of origin.
The migrants who are deported to Albania are supposed to be all males coming from a list of countries that Italy has classified as “safe,” meaning their asylum applications have little chance of approval and they can therefore be swiftly repatriated to their countries of origin.
Italy has agreed to take those migrants granted asylum, but any whose applications fail will be deported directly from Albania.
The arrangement allows Rome to send a maximum of 36,000 migrants to the center each year, so long as they have come from countries classified as “safe.”
