Letters from CIE

Letters from CIE is part of a larger visual project about Identification and Expulsion Centers in Italy (CIE is short for Centri di Identificazione ed Espulsione—Identification and Expulsion Centers; since 2017, they have been called Repatriation Centers—Centri di Permanenza per i Rimpatri or CPR).

The CIE/CPR were instituted to identify and execute the expulsion of all foreign citizens who do not have the regular documents required to reside in Italy. Even if foreigners are held under the status of "guests," because officially Italian law does not provide detention for this type of offense, their stay in these contentious structures corresponds to "de facto" detention, as they are deprived of their freedom and subjected to a regime of abuse and coercion. These Centers aren't officially prisons but very often resemble them, with distinctive features such as high levels of security, barbed wire fences, barking dogs, and militarized personnel.

A variety of individuals are detained in the Italian CIEs and their detention can extend up to one hundred and twenty days. Often, detainees are migrants who have been living in Italy for many years, along with their families, and whose children were born in the country. After losing their jobs, they cannot renew their residence permits, and, if stopped by the police, may be detained for repatriation to their countries of origin. The number of families divided by this mechanism is high. Potential asylum seekers may also be detained when they fail to ask for political asylum. In addition, former prisoners, after serving their sentences, are again locked up in CIEs in order to be expelled from Italy. Finally, since "Ius Soli" is not recognized in Italy, when Italians born to parents with foreign origins become of legal age, they are often imprisoned in the CIE (if they do not have their own residence permit); then they can be expelled.

I developed this project in 2013–2014 at the CIEs of Ponte Galeria, Rome, and Bari Palese, in Apulia, during a window of time in which the authorities allowed access to journalists and activists. After some time the CIEs became off-limits to civil society again, and detainees were left alone and in distress.

Main entrance of Ponte Galeria's CIE, Rome.

After a system of gates, the male sector is organized with several blocks along a main space used by the police as a "safety zone" in order to control the prisoners. During the night all blocks are closed till the next morning. On the other side of the CIE of Ponte Galeria, there is a specular female sector, spatially organized in the same way.

It is very hard for lawyers to work for the detained because Italian law on migration doesn't give them juridical tools to defend the migrants and avoid their expulsion. For this reason, Italy, and other European countries, are at the center of serious violations of human rights with the detention and forced deportation of thousands of migrants. Male sector, Ponte Galeria, Rome.

Checkerboard realized with bottle caps. One of the devastating effects of the detention in the CIEs is the alienation and inactivity, mainly caused by inability to understand reasons for detention. Bari Palese.

Male block, Ponte Galeria, Rome.

Male room, Ponte Galeria, Rome.

A Nigerian man, detained for a month in Bari Palese, waiting for his forced-flight repatriation.

Male block, Bari Palese.

A migrant shows how detainees prepare coffee or tea, heating water through electric wires in a cut plastic bottle. Bari Palese.

Internal communication: we inform you that today the following guests of the CIE are on hunger strike. This official document is a periodic weight...