Belgian MPs approved a law last Friday that allows police to forcibly enter homes to remove undocumented people, drawing warnings from rights campaigners that the country could see ICE-style raids.

What the law allows

The measures were introduced by Belgium's ruling right-leaning coalition to ramp up expulsions of people who have been denied the right to stay. In the run-up to the vote, more than 60 protests were held across the country.

From next spring, the law will give the Belgian immigration office the power to ask an investigating judge to authorise entry into residences that may be housing people without papers - including homes where migrants are staying with friends or family.

• •Once a warrant is obtained, police can enter homes without consent between 5am and 9pm.
• •Officers can detain people and search for identity documents.
• •Entries could happen in the presence of children.

Government's stated target

Officials said the measures are aimed at people who were denied asylum in Belgium, ignored orders to leave and are regarded as a threat to public order or national security.

Critics respond that the law is vague on what counts as a public threat, pointing to cases where such terms were applied to people who had done undeclared work, run a red light or shoplifted - leaving the judgement to individual judges.

'A law of fear': rights groups respond

Carine Thibaut, director of Amnesty International's French-speaking Belgian section, said: "It's a law of fear ... It really disseminates fear," citing the impact on children and on the people hosting them.

That statement came from twenty rights groups, including Amnesty, who warned that the law conflates lack of legal status with delinquency. Amnesty International also said judges would lack full investigative powers, be limited in whom they could ask for information, and that the legislation fails to provide a means for people to appeal or challenge any decisions.

"They always say it's for criminals," Thibaut said, adding that the authorities "already have all the tools to address this problem, because they can do that through the normal justice system".

Warnings of a wider EU shift

Chiara Catelli, advocacy officer at the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (Picum), said: "This really has nothing to do with people who have committed crimes," describing deportation as an administrative procedure. Critics of the measures have also included NGOs, judges and lawyers' associations, some of whom drew parallels with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests under Donald Trump.

"We've all seen the devastating consequences of home raids in the US, where they fuel fear and violence and tear families apart," Catelli said. "It's deeply alarming that an EU member state is now moving in the same direction". She noted that similar hardline measures already exist in the Netherlands and Germany, and that the EU's recently approved returns regulation includes similar provisions, meaning other member states could adopt comparable measures.

"We're really afraid that this is the beginning of something that will become more widespread," she said.

Thibaut warned that such measures would gradually erode everyone's rights: "It's the beginning of reducing the state of law and the respect for human rights". "This time it is for people without papers; after that, it might be people who are using drugs," she added - a way to "slowly, slowly dismantle a society based on human rights, on respect for justice and on separation of powers".

The law takes effect next spring.