Abstract

Deportation and pre-removal detention of undocumented migrants has raised in recent years a lively social and academic debate in Spain. However, access to official data and deportation files has been traditionally not easy and existing literature does not always include an empirical legal approach. After describing the Spanish deportation system and regulation, this study analyses existing official data on pre-removal detention and focuses on the main results of an innovative empirical research of pre-removal detention files processed in 2015 in the province of Barcelona. The analysis of more than 500 files gives relevant information about how these files are processed and which are the criteria used in practice by police officials, public prosecutors, legal practitioners and judges regarding pre-removal detention of deportable migrants.