Meloni’s Albania scheme hits another bump in the road

ROME — The Italian coast guard on Tuesday transported seven Bangladeshi and Egyptian men held in Albania to Italy after judges in Rome blocked Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s plans to hold migrants outside Italy.
It’s another blow to the controversial deal put forward by Meloni’s right-wing, anti-immigration government.
Immigration judges in Rome on Monday ordered that the men who were rescued by an Italian warship in international waters and later transferred to the non-EU country of Albania must be taken back to Italy.
“The primacy of European Union law is the cornerstone on which the community of national courts rests,” said the general secretary of the National Association of Magistrates, Salvatore Casciaro, defending the judges. He added the judges must apply European Union law when he “deems the internal legislation incompatible with that of the Union.”
The Rome court’s ruling immediately sparked Italian government outrage, with Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini accusing the judges of “endangering the safety and wallets of Italians,” with their decision.
The issue also caught the attention of American billionaire Elon Musk, a supporter of both Meloni and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
“These judges need to go,” Musk wrote in a comment on X under a post that reported the judges’ decision. “Elon Musk is right,” replied Salvini.
President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa, a member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, said Tuesday that the European Court of Justice might be the right place to decide on this “controversial” issue.
This is the second time Italian judges have forced the government to relocate migrants from the Albanian detention centers back to Italy since they opened.
Meloni struck a deal in 2023 with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to detain and process the asylum claims of up to 30,000 migrants picked up while crossing the Mediterranean in Albania. 
Italy has designated Egypt and Bangladesh as countries safe to repatriate migrants denied asylum. 
But the European Court of Justice has said countries cannot be categorized as safe unless all regions and all minority groups within the country are safe.
In October, an initial group of 16 migrants were moved from Albania to Italy after the Rome court cited the ECJ ruling, and because some were considered vulnerable.
The Rome government responded by updating their list of safe countries and enshrining it in law. 
Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove, a MP with Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and justice undersecretary, said in a statement: “The Government does not agree with the sentences, we will challenge them and will continue the project of protecting the [EU’s] external borders. We were elected to fight irregular immigration and dismantle the inhuman slave trade along the Mediterranean and we will not give up.”
The offshore detention centers are expected to act as a deterrent, according to Meloni, but are predicted to cost Rome around €800 million over five years.
The judges’ decision has heightened existing tensions between Italy’s executive and judiciary on immigration as Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini stands trial for holding migrants hostage on an NGO rescue vessel in 2019.
Salvini has called the immigration judges “communists” and “anti-Italian.”
One of the judges has been placed under police protection after receiving death threats.