How is it possible that a European citizen is stopped, checked, questioned, even expelled, or arrested and detained for having crossed an EU border, without having been charged with any crime?
THE FACT
On Friday, November 21, 2025, Italian illustrator and cartoonist Elena Mistrello boarded a plane to Toulouse, France: she was on her way to one of the many comic book festivals she attends every year, where she was invited to sign copies of her first book translated in French. As soon as she landed, before even entering the airport, three Police Nationale officers stopped her and immediately told her she was barred from entering France. She tried to explain to the officers that she was there for work and absolutely had to go to this fair. The officers were adamant: in their opinion, the cartoonist represented “a threat to public order and French national security,” despite
having a clean criminal record and no pending trials, either in Italy or France. Without further explanation, within fifteen minutes, they put her back on the same plane she had arrived on, with a deportation order from French territory in her pocket.
Back in Milan, Elena recounted her story in a short article published on her blog (elenamistrello.wordpress.com/2025/11/22/piccola-cronaca-di-un-
respingimento-forzato-toulouse-2025/), which received considerable attention. The media coverage of the episode sparked outrage and many questions among the Italian and French public.
Given all this attention, we believe it’s important to place this incident within a broader framework, because unfortunately, this is neither a random nor an isolated event. As Elena also mentions in her text, this expulsion is most likely linked to the major international anti-fascist and anti-capitalist mobilizations
that took place in Europe in 2023, and her story is only the latest in a long series of “anomalies.”
In fact, over the last two and a half years, dozens of Italian activists and militants have been stopped, monitored, interrogated, in some cases expelled, and even arrested and detained for several days for having crossed European borders, without being charged with specific crimes but only because they were deemed generally as “dangerous.”
We therefore want to start from this case to broaden our perspective and shed light on an increasingly systematic problem that can no longer be ignored.
THE BACKGROUND
2023 is a special year for the history and memory of the European anti-fascist movement. It marks twenty years since the death of Davide Cesare “Dax,” killed in Milan in 2003, and ten years since the deaths of Clément Meric, killed in June 2013 in Paris, and Pavlos Fyssas, “Killah P,” killed in September 2013 near Athens.
This year, dozens of meetings, assemblies, demonstrations, and concerts are being organized in various countries. Anti-fascists and anti-capitalists from all over Europe (and beyond) are gathering in Milan, Paris, Athens, and Madrid to confront each other, exchange experiences, and build a common perspective for struggle.
Obviously, European governments and police forces don’t like it: the creation of this network of relationships is immediately targeted.
In this context, in June 2023, a large group of Italian comrades arrived in Paris to participate in the week of commemoration in honor of Clément Meric. Among these people was the cartoonist Elena Mistrello.
Concerts, assemblies, and demonstrations are public and take place without incident or tension, but already during these initiatives, three Italian comrades are stalked, handcuffed, and arrested while in a pharmacy and then deported to a CRA (the French administrative detention center for migrants) for expulsion. No complaint is filed against them, nor are they accused of any crime: they are simply referred to in a generic way as “dangerous” people. In a Kafkaesque situation, for the entire first day the three comrades are given no explanation of what is happening. Only that evening did they discover that the then French Minister of the Interior, Gerard Darmanin, had issued a measure called IAT (Interdiction Administrative du Territoire, Administrative Interdiction from the Territory) against them and other anti-fascists, a ban on staying on French soil, precisely in view of the week of commemoration for Clément.
The Prefect requests a one-month prison sentence, extendable to three months pending expulsion. The comrades, however, manage to appeal to a judge: the court declares their detention unlawful, and on the third day they are released (two years later, the IAT will also be declared unlawful because it is based on criteria that are too general, and Minister Darmanin will be ordered to pay the legal costs of this case).
The story isn’t over. In the following months and years, many “anomalies” were recorded in border controls for dozens of Italians who had taken part in the 2023 Parisian days.
Elena’s case is only the latest and the most striking. Over the past two and a half years, there have been numerous incidents of checks, lengthy interrogations, excessive delays in handing over passports, and difficulties crossing European borders, both for personal and work reasons. We know with certainty that for at least twenty people, this situation has become systematic. To these cases, we can add almost a hundred Italians turned back at the French border by IATs in 2023 while they were reaching a NO TAV demonstration, the cases of the expulsion of pro-Palestinian activists from Germany, and the five Italians heading to Hamburg while an anti-militarist conference was taking place, expelled in November 2025.
However, it is likely that the actual cases are many more.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?
How is it possible that a European citizen is stopped, checked, interrogated, even expelled, or even arrested and detained for crossing an EU border, without being charged with any crime?
The answer lies in the increasingly widespread use of administrative and preventive measures.
But what are they? They are a set of measures that limit freedom of movement (for example, the prohibition on entering or exiting certain areas, cities, or countries, on leaving home at certain times, on crossing certain borders, and even actual detentions). They are “administrative” in the sense that they are not “criminal”: they do not punish a specific crime, but rather generically “personal behavior.” They are not decided by a judge and are not based on a trial: they are issued by the Minister of the Interior or the Prefect, based on indications from the police who deem certain people “dangerous” or “suspicious” in general terms. They are “preventive” because they do not punish a crime already committed, are not based on a conviction or a specific complaint, but limit the freedom of people who according to the police “could” perhaps commit crimes in the future.
This is why they make no distinction between people with criminal records and those without criminal records, between those with pending charges and trials and those without. They can potentially affect everyone.
It’s clear that measures of this kind lie in a gray area bordering on the rule of law and the values of liberal democracy, at least in theory:
it would seem difficult for a good democratic citizen to think
that people’s fundamental freedoms can be limited without due trial.
Some of these measures were, in fact, born as “exceptional” strategies to counter “international terrorism”: faced with the risk of “terrorism,” to many, even doing something that is not perfectly “democratic” and “liberal” seems acceptable.
As often happens, however, their use was then expanded instrumentally to many other categories of people, becoming less and less an “exception” and more and more the rule.
Stemming from anti-terrorism, some of these measures may be protected by secrecy and do not necessarily need advance notification: even if you are a European citizen, your presence in an EU country may be suspicious or illegal without your knowledge. Precisely for this reason, you may be monitored, interrogated, expelled, or even arrested without any formal complaint being filed against you.
Absurd?
Yes.
Anti-democratic?
Perhaps.
Yet that’s exactly how it works.
BROADEN OUR VISION
Since 2023, the use of these measures against political activists has become increasingly widespread in Europe, especially in Italy, France, and Germany.
Unfortunately, this trend shouldn’t surprise us. European states have been using administrative measures against migrants and racialized people for decades. Every day, they are stopped, monitored, rejected, and expelled, locked up for months or years in administrative detention centers (CPR/CRA), or left to die at sea or in the mountains, in almost general silence.
Freedom of movement, rights, democracy, and the guarantee of protection for your safety and dignity simply don’t exist and never have existed if you don’t have a “Western” passport or if you don’t have money.
While for European citizens today it seems like an absurd exception, for many people this has always been the norm. In Palestine, for example, administrative detention (preventive, without justification or trial) is the most common form of repression used by Israel against the Palestinian people.
Arresting, detaining, and expelling for prevention are not legacies of countries at war or non-Western countries; on the contrary, they are absolutely supported and widely used by those countries that boast of being “democratic.”
Even in Europe, freedom of movement and personal freedom are never truly guaranteed for anyone. States always have the power to revoke or limit rights, without undergoing a trial. Having a European Union passport is (and remains) a great privilege, but its guarantees are now only guaranteed up to a certain point.
Whether you’re anti-fascist, pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, or for social and climate justice, your freedom of movement is arbitrarily granted or revoked by the police and the Ministries of the Interior. Because it’s not just what you do that matters, but also and above all what you are, what you think and say, the people and spaces you frequent.
This is why it is important to fight these repressive measures, so that no one is ever again a victim: the limitation of others’ freedom always concerns us and concerns us all.
We believe that the European situation is particularly concerning at this time. In this period of great global economic and political crisis, with the ongoing genocide and the “Western bloc” rushing toward rearmament and war, we believe this type of repression will only get worse.
To prepare for war, historically, one always begins by repressing internal dissent before attacking an external enemy.
Those who oppose these policies will be increasingly targeted, especially if the dissent takes on an international dimension. Relations, travel, and solidarity between different peoples pose a danger to states that are becoming increasingly authoritarian.
Among activists and militants, the people most severely affected are obviously migrants, asylum seekers, citizens without citizenship, and Palestinians. For them, receiving administrative measures of this kind could mean losing their residence permit or the right to asylum, being locked up for months or years in a detention center, or being expelled to countries where their lives would be at risk. This is happening right now in Italy, to Mohamed Shahin, imam of Turin, to whom we extend our unconditional solidarity.
Those who don’t have the privilege of holding a “Western” passport have always been at infinitely greater risk.
Those who hold a European passport and, even when faced with less risks, are fortunate enough to receive more media attention, now have a duty to speak openly about these measures, which potentially affect everyone.
We think it’s time to take this issue seriously.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN
This increasingly widespread use of administrative and preventive measures is part of the increasingly close cooperation between European police forces.
It’s important to remember that this action is complementary to the extremely severe criminal repression that affects groups and individuals engaged in struggle.
On this front, too, a qualitative leap has been recorded, starting in 2023. The most obvious evidence is the show trials for the Budapest events and for the phantom association “Antifa Ost,” which the international solidarity campaign FREE ALL ANTIFAS (freeallantifas.noblogs.org/ ) is supporting. The Budapest and “Antifa Ost” events are the most serious and striking examples of the relentlessness against international anti-fascism, in which the Hungarian and German governments stand out, and in which we have seen various EU police forces collaborate with “European arrest warrants.” We would also like to mention other minor but significant episodes, such as the
dissolution of the groups “GALE – Groupe Antifasciste Lyon et Environs” and “La Jeune Garde” by the French government.
The repression of anti-fascist movements is not the responsibility of individual authoritarian governments, but is a European phenomenon: police forces in different countries collaborate by profiling their citizens, creating lists of generic “suspects,” and exchanging information on their movements.
Neither the trials in Germany and Hungary, nor the “European Arrest Warrants,” nor the checks, deportations and arrests in France and Germany would be possible without this type of collaboration.
Finally, in a global context, we also recall the recent inclusion of “Antifa” groups (including European ones) in the list of terrorist organizations as requested by Trump, and the escalation of repression against militant anti-fascism in the US, an operation that opens up increasingly disturbing repressive scenarios.
CONCLUSIONS
In a Europe that is increasingly shifting to the right and rapidly heading toward war, we believe it is crucial to focus on all the dynamics described and to find the necessary countermeasures together. Today, we need all our intelligence, determination, and creativity to have a broad view and hold the various plans together. We also know that appealing to the institutions is not enough: we need a strong and collective political response.
Freedom of movement is an essential prerequisite both for the legitimate needs of life of individuals and for the political freedom of activists and militants, especially from the perspective of internationalist confrontation.
With this statement (translated into several languages), we want to reach as many people as possible to:
– raise awareness over the use of preventive and administrative measures
– understand and disseminate as widely as possible how they work
– learn about and collect other similar cases (we are sure there are many)
– unite supporters, activists, militants, and lawyers to provide information and create solidarity
– help those affected by these measures receive assistance and legal protection
– develop a political analysis of the use of preventive and administrative measures within the current historical phase
– express our solidarity with all anti-fascists and comrades detained and affected by repression, with all Palestinian political prisoners and with all those detained in CRA/CPR (and in any migrants detention center)
– protect and reclaim our spaces of action
We ask for maximum dissemination and hope to be able to open a collective discussion as soon as possible.
FREE EVERYONE
Assembly for the construction of the days for Dax (Milan)
https://daxresiste.noblogs.org/
daxresiste@inventati.org
December 2025
Schengen police connection
