A/HRC/44/42 propelled by migrant women’s groups resulted in the Government allowing the return of Vanessa Gómez Cueva, a migrant who had been deported to Peru with her youngest child, leaving behind two other children of Argentinian nationality. 28 62. Migrants who are part of a vulnerable minority group in their country of destination often find their efforts to organize particularly challenging. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex migrants commonly face discrimination both from destination country communities and from other migrants, so that even finding a safe space in which to meet becomes a barrier to association. Transgender migrants in some countries find it difficult to access the identity documentation needed to regularize their status, which may make exercising their right to freedom of association more hazardous as an undocumented migrant. Migrant sex workers, even in countries where sex work is legal for citizens, can be prevented by law from unionizing or from associating with their peer networks through third party criminalization laws. This makes it more difficult for migrant sex workers to openly join sex worker advocacy groups. 4. Impact of a security-oriented approach to migration on migrants’ right to freedom of association 63. States that approach migration through a security-oriented lens tend to erect additional barriers to migrant association, emphasizing criminalization over a rights-based approach and holding migrants in detention for long periods of time. The nature of detention often results in the denial of the right to free association, as migrants are commonly held in remote locations and in centres that operate with strict security protocols, limiting the ability of the detained migrants to interact with family members, religious leaders, human rights defenders, legal assistance, civil society leaders and other community members. For example, attorneys’ access to their migrant clients is significantly restricted by such detention owing to the inaccessible locations in which migrants are held in various countries. In addition to the remote locations, cumbersome entry procedures and regulations have also severely limited access to detainees for civil society organization representatives and lawyers. Even within the detention centre or camp, migrants may find it difficult to find the physical space to organize privately with other detainees or to meet with their legal representative. 64. Where migrant detainees held in detention centres or camps are isolated from the outside world, they are particularly vulnerable to retaliation from authorities for attempts to organize and speak out about poor conditions or abuses within the detention centre or camp. In 2018, for example, 115 detained immigrants began a hunger strike to protest against the conditions at Pine Prairie Detention Center in Louisiana, in the United States. Guards responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings, solitary confinement and by completely barring contact with family members and attorneys. 29 Retaliation has a chilling effect on further migrant organizing inside the detention centres or camps. 65. Even outside of detention centres or camps, a security-oriented approach can, in practice, limit the exercise of free association by heightening migrants’ fear that they may be under surveillance, accused of national security offences or of terrorist association and deported. For instance, in September 2019, Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, published a tender inviting surveillance companies to bid for a project that would monitor the Internet use of migrants and civil society, purportedly to help combat human smuggling and trafficking.30 After civil society expressed concerns, the call was rescinded. 28 29 30 See www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AMR1309892019ENGLISH.pdf. Freedom for Immigrants, “As hunger strikes erupt nationwide in ICE detention, immigrants subjected to retaliation and excessive force“, 6 August 2019. New Neighbours, “Frontex wanted to monitor ‘civil society and diaspora communities in destination (EU)’”, 11 December 2019; Lina Vosyliūtė, “How could strategic litigation prevent policing of humanitarianism?”, Research Social Platform on Migration and Asylum, December 2019, p. 28. 11