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As with living conditions, access to detention centres and – importantly – to detained applicants is very different in law than it is in practice. Overall, it can be said that detained applicants face extremely serious challenges in being able to reach out to the outside world for information and services.
The Reception Regulations provide for the possibility for detainees to receive visits from family members and friends up to once per week. The Detention Service administration shall determine dates and times once the Principal Immigration Officer (PIO) approves such visits.[1]
The Detention Services Regulations provide that detained persons are entitled to visits from, or communications with, authorised persons and representatives of non-governmental organisations, save to the extent necessary in the interests of security or safety.[2] Representatives of international organisations and non-governmental organisations have access to detained persons after obtaining the authorisation of the Head Detention Services or the Principal Immigration Officer acting on the advice of the Minister.[3]
The legal adviser or representative of any detained person in any legal proceedings shall be afforded reasonable facilities for interviewing him in confidence, save that any such interview maybe in the sight of an officer.[4]
Religious organisations may request access to detention centres to the Head Detention Service who may grant such access on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the Principal Immigration Officer.[5]
The Regulations also provide that all detained persons shall have access to public telephones at the detention centres and that he Head Detention Services may bear the expense of any telephone calls, within reasonable limits, by providing phone cards to all detained persons.[6]
The 2023 Visitors Policy
NGOs and other entities’ limitations in accessing detention centres was one of the major issues throughout 2023, after several obstacles to access being introduced in previous years.
In August 2023, the Detention Services Agency published a new Visit Policy, essentially incorporating what had been until then standard practice of increasingly restricting access to the centres. The new policy limited access to centres – and therefore to applicants – to qualified and warranted lawyers and required applicants to sign their consent to be visited. Visits were limited to no more than six persons at a time, to be held in a designated area, and all visitors were required to leave all belongings – including phones – in locked cabinets. Frisk searches were made compulsory. Control over the visit, including the visit, was entirely at the discretion of the Detention Services. This new policy was shared with entities usually visiting detention centres and was immediately not well-received.
NGOs complained about the excessive burdens imposed on practitioners trying to access detention centres, essentially impinging on the right of all detained persons to receive impartial information and services. In particular, they expressed disagreement with the DS’ self-imposed role of approving individual lawyers for applicants, a practice that had seen DS refuse NGO access to applicants on the basis that the applicant was being provided services by other legal practitioners. This practice reinforced informal information received by NGOs that government officials were being barred from referring applicants to NGO legal services.
The new policy was rejected by aditus, JRS, UNHCR, Malta Red Cross and IOM, albeit for different reasons. Effectively this meant that, from the date of introduction of this new visitors’ policy, only a few visits were organised to detention, and this situation continued until January 2024.
Following months of disagreement on the policy, difficult negotiations between NGOs and the Ministry led to the publication of a revised policy in December 2023. NGOs agreed to sign the new policy, with reservations, whilst UNHCR continued its discussion with the Government towards the signing of an MoU. In January 2024, NGO lawyers started visiting the detention centres once again, under the conditions of the new policy. The conditions are only limitedly different from the original 2023 policy, as explained below (see Legal assistance for review of detention).
In terms of the new Detention Services Agency Visitors Policy,[7] all visits must be requested in advance indicating the details of the applicants to be visited and each visit will only permit a maximum of six persons. All meetings with detained persons are to be conducted in a room equipped with a CCTV camera and no personal equipment is permitted inside the room. These must be left in cabinets, and all visitors are to be frisked before entry.
Family members and friends must request access via email and a time slot will be allocated accordingly.
Access to Journalists
Up until 2021, Times of Malta and independent journalists reported that its journalists were repeatedly denied access to the Safi detention centre.[8]
In 2020, a prominent blogger and activist filed a court application claiming that the Government’s refusal to grant him access to prison and to detention centres amounted to a violation of his fundamental rights. Judgement was delivered in 2023, when Malta’s Civil Court (Constitutional Jurisdiction) upheld the journalist claims that the ban had violated his right to freedom of expression. The judgment, later appealed by the Government, ordered the head of the Detention Services ”to grant the applicant access in order for him to visit the above-mentioned facilities and to allow him to take necessary photos, always in respect of the detainees’ privacy.”[9] The judgement was confirmed on appeal.[10]
In 2023, as part of its reform of the detention regime, the Detention Services Agency published a protocol on media access.[11] Written requests for a visit to a detention centre should be made to the CEO of the Detention Services Agency. If approved, a date will be set for the visit, during which the following rules are to be respected:
- No recording, filming, photography or voice recordings;
- Interviews with the DS CEO are permitted, subject to prior approval;
- Mobile phones and all means of communication will be temporarily confiscated;
- Security screening will be implemented, including personal searches;
- All visits will be along a set route and accompanied by DS officials;
- Random access to areas not related to the visit’s purpose are prohibited;
- Visits may be suspended at any time.
According to the Home Affairs Ministry, two media requests were granted however in the absence of further details or of any reporting, NGOs could not verify this information. One journalist interviewed the DSA CEO. In the interview, the CEO provided details on developments since the publication of the 2021 CPT report.[12]
Access to the UNHCR
UNHCR Malta was also affected by the 2023 DSA visitors policy. When this was published and notified to entities wishing to access detention centres, UNHCR was one of the organisations that refused to accept and sign the new policy. This meant that for the second half of 2023, UNHCR enjoyed limited access to detention centres. A new rule was also introduced barring UNHCR from accessing persons unless they had formally lodged an asylum application. This policy remained implemented throughout 2024 and 2025. aditus and JRS Malta commented that, coupled with a more aggressive approach urging voluntary return on persons from particular countries of origin and the effective impossibility of newly-arrived persons from accessing independent and impartial information, this has at times resulted in persons returning to their countries of origin without ever having received any information on the right to seek asylum.
UNHCR reported that in 2025 it conducted 11 visits to detention centres and met with 50 asylum-seekers. The Agency noted that the information sessions covered the following thematic areas: UNHCR’s mandate and role in Malta; the right to seek asylum and the asylum procedure, including grounds for international protection and national forms of protection; rights and obligations of asylum-seekers; detention procedures, including grounds for detention orders and the rights of persons in detention; detention reviews; and the translation and explanation of detention orders, which are issued in English.
During these monitoring visits, asylum-seekers also shared feedback with UNHCR on detention conditions, challenges, and their priority needs. In addition, during these group meetings, UNHCR identified persons in need of specialized services and referred them to AWAS, DSA personnel, and other relevant actors, including JRS.[13]
In 2024, UNHCR and the DSA continued discussing a MOU on UNHCR’s access to detention, set to be signed in 2025. At the time of writing (January 2026), the MOU had not yet been signed.
Access to NGOs and Lawyers
Since 2022 only persons providing legal services are granted access to detainees, and with several practical obstacles. As such, access is only viewed within the scope of the lawyer-client relationship and not within the broader aim of information or service provision to detainees irrespectively of whether they are represented by the lawyer of the NGO.
JRS Malta reported that its psychologists and social workers are not allowed to provide their services to detainees. As mentioned above, this limitation is problematic not only because it deprives detainees of much-needed professional services, but also because it prevents detainees from obtaining independent assessments that could be relied upon to confirm their vulnerability, and therefore the illegality of their detention. Throughout 2024 and 2025, the Malta LGBTIQ+ Rights Movement (MGRM) repeatedly requested access to Safi Detention Centre to visit detainees who specifically asked for their services. These requests were consistently denied by the DS, stating that adequate support services are already being provided by the DS. This was flagged in the pending ECtHR application M.S. vs. Malta, brought by an LGBTIQ+ applicant confirmed as vulnerable yet denied MGRM services by DS. [14]
Lawyers are only allowed to visit identified clients. They are not able to access newly-arrived or newly-detained persons until they are able to provide DS with a name, surname and Immigration Number. This means that, in practice, for applicants to have access to legal information and services, NGOs must call regularly each block of the detention centres and request personal information of groups of people over the zone’s public phone: police numbers, exact names, detention grounds, overview of asylum claim, vulnerabilities, countries of origins and other details have to be continuously registered and updated for the lawyers to be able to specify which individual applicants they would like to visit as clients. It was noted that on several occasions during these weekly calls, NGOs were alerted to the presence of either new arrivals or new arrests, including of persons to be immediately removed.
NGOs commented that this system empowers information gate-keepers, creating complex ethical and safety issues. It also requires detained persons to reveal personal information in an impersonal, public and at times dangerous manner. Furthermore, NGOs noted that this system tends to favour enabled persons whilst possibly omitting the more vulnerable.
With this information, often lacking detail and clarity since only obtained over the phone, NGO lawyers are required to submit a visit request to the Detention Services in order to reserve a slot in the centre board room. NGOs are usually allocated up to four hours, during which the lawyers (accompanied by an interpreter, as needed) are able to talk to a maximum of six persons. There are weeks when NGOs visit a detention centre twice, whilst there are times when weeks pass without any slot being allocated since the board room might not be available. In 2024 and 2025, NGOs commented that their access to their clients was entirely dependent on the DS, including for situations of emergency. They reported being offered visit slots on weekends as the only available time. They also reported a number of incidents where the DS alleged that the persons listed on their authorisation request indicated a refusal to meet the NGO lawyer, without however providing evidence of this refusal.
NGOs are also not alerted to the presence of people picked up from their workplaces, homes, buses or road-blocks.
NGOs flagged that, since 2023, each block of the Detention Centres is equipped with a phone and detainees are provided with telephone vouchers to use with these phones. According to the Home Affairs Ministry, in 2023 the DSA distributed 4,510 vouchers.[15] NGOs commented that the available credit on these phones was merely sufficient to call family members. They confirmed having met some clients with a printed sheet having lists of organisations and telephone numbers, but the system of distribution or explanation of this list remains unclear. For example, it is not clear if persons detained following raids in homes, workplaces or the streets are provided this information or any information on their rights, including the possibility to seek asylum.
Some blocks allow applicants to ask the guards to access a mobile phone, but this requires the ability and capacity to communicate with the guards. NGOs noted that language difficulties and also individual vulnerabilities often prevented detained persons from relying on this method of communication, commenting that they very rarely received calls through this means.
NGOs also noted the impossibility of reaching new arrivals by phone for the first days or weeks following their arrivals. aditus noted that throughout 2024 and 2025 several documented attempts were made to reach newly-arrived people in China House, yet it was clear that the telephones in the blocks they were detained in had been either switched off or otherwise made unusable. Identical problems were flagged in relation to persons held in isolation in Safi. Despite these issues being repeatedly presented to the DS and to the Home Affairs Ministry, no response was provided.
Furthermore, throughout 2025 NGOs repeatedly requested the DS to provide them with the telephone numbers of each of the zones within the centres, this being the only way they could communicate with detainees, including their clients. To date, these requests remain ignored by the DS.
This lack of access to lawyers is particularly problematic due to the fact that deadlines stipulated in Maltese legislation for the filing of appeals against Detention Orders (three days), Removal Orders (three days), age assessment decisions (three days), and negative asylum decisions (15 days) are extremely stringent and template application forms are not regularly provided in detention. The actual deadlines amount more or less to the actual time needed to get the approval for a visit the following week.
This policy of heavily restricted access results in the absence of provision of basic information on the asylum procedure, identification of vulnerable persons including persons requiring specialised legal advice/information relating to their asylum claims such as LGBTIQ+ applicants and victims of sexual or other forms of violence, information on the available legal support for detainees, or the possibility to appeal decisions within the legal deadlines. Applicants can therefore go through their entire asylum procedure without ever being given any independent legal advice or information.
In relation to detained applicants channelled through the accelerated procedure, these are issued with the IPAT review, a Removal Order and Return Decision along with their rejection. As stated above, they cannot appeal their first instance decision and they usually would miss the short deadline (three days) to appeal the Removal Order, which necessarily needs the intervention of an NGO lawyer or a private lawyer. This lack of procedural safeguards coupled with the lack of communication from Immigration Police regarding removal arrangements means that individuals are at an increased risk of refoulement.
[1] Regulation 6A, Reception Regulations.
[2] Regulation 30.
[3] Regulation 49(2).
[4] Regulation 34.
[5] Regulation 29.
[6] Regulation 35.
[7] Detention Services Agency, Detention Services Agency Visitors Policy, December 2023, available at: https://bit.ly/3WZAu2c.
[8] Times of Malta, ‘UN slams “shocking” conditions for migrants in Malta’, 2 October 2020, available at: https://bit.ly/2NHS4qb; Malta Today, ‘Manuel Delia demands access to detention centres, prison’, 21 February 2020, available at: https://bit.ly/2NHSeOj.
[9] Civil Court First Hall (Constitutional Jurisdiction), Emanuel Delia vs. Hon. Byron Camilleri et, 201/2020, 11 December 2023, at: https://bit.ly/4awOjs1.
[10] Constitutional Court, Emanuel Delia vs. Hon. Byon Camilleri et, 201/20/1 TA, 20 October 2025, at: https://tinyurl.com/vf95v6r5.
[11] Detention Services Agency, Media Protocol, 2023 at: https://bit.ly/3ViXcRD.
[12] The Malta Independent, ‘Detention Services refute claims of poor living conditions, verbal abuse for irregular migrants’, 28 July 2024, available at: https://tinyurl.com/4annktdh.
[13] Information provided by UNHCR Malta in March 2026.
[14] ECtHR, M.S. v. Malta, no. 30737/24 (Communicated Case), at: https://tinyurl.com/2z8tknds.
[15] Information provided by Home Affairs Ministry in January 2024.