Five months ago, at 10 o’clock in the morning, German police arrived at the home and parish of Christian Hartung, a pastor in Rhineland-Palatinate. At the same time, they descended on the residences of four other Protestant pastors, seizing some of their cell phones, correspondence with lawyers and church records.

It was an “attempt at intimidation,” Hartung told openDemocracy. The pastors have been under police investigation since 2018, after allowing Sudanese refugees to sleep in church buildings in rural, western Germany. It’s a region where the far-right AfD party is aiming for record votes in this week’s hotly-contested European Parliament elections.

Hartung described an “emergency situation” in which church sanctuary was “the last lifeline” for these refugees, some of whom had life-threatening health problems. While he believes the investigation against him and his fellow pastors will eventually be dropped, he says that if it goes to court they "are ready to fight".

These pastors are among the hundreds of Europeans who have been arrested, investigated, or threatened with prison or fines over the past five years under a range of different laws that rights advocates say are “criminalising solidarity” with migrants, according to a new dataset of these cases compiled by openDemocracy.

Individuals affected include a priest nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, a football player, firefighters, rural farmers, ex-soldiers, pensioners, a university professor and several local politicians. Their numbers have risen sharply in the last 18 months, particularly in Italy and France, where far-right parties are in power at national and local levels respectively.

In Italy, the leader of the far-right Lega party Matteo Salvini has made targeting those who “facilitate illegal migration” a hallmark of his reign as interior minister. In France, the far-right National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen has for years represented Calais in parliament. The port city is a hotspot for arrests of volunteers who help migrants.

The Lega and National Rally are among the far right parties aiming to make big gains in this week’s European elections, promising to further control borders and crack down on those who move ‘illegally’. If they succeed, arrests of Europeans could also rise further.

In Spain, Paula Schmid Porras, an international human rights lawyer who has defended a group of firefighters in these cases, warned: “Punishing or criminalising people who help other people is something that violates all human rights conventions since the second world war. This is something that cannot be tolerated... or accepted – period”.

‘Criminalised’ for basic support

Countries across Europe have criminalised acts that facilitate illegal immigration. Some laws intended to deter human smugglers have also been used against humanitarian actors, including search and rescue boat crews and volunteer lifeguards.

openDemocracy worked with journalists across Europe to compile the longest known list of more than 250 people across 14 countries who have been arrested, charged or investigated under a range of laws over the last five years for supporting migrants.

Most of the cases we found occurred in just seven countries: Italy, Greece, France, the UK, Germany, Denmark and Spain. But, because of the myriad difficulties involved in gathering comprehensive data, the full figures are likely much higher.

These cases – compiled from news reports and other records from researchers, NGOs and activist groups, as well as new interviews across Europe – suggest a sharp increase in the number of people targeted since the start of 2018. At least 100 people were arrested, charged or investigated last year (a doubling of that figure for the preceding year).

Most of these people appear to have been targeted for providing food, shelter, transport, or other support to migrants without legal papers.

There were also at least 22 people arrested or charged last year for disrupting deportations in the UK, France, Germany, Iceland, Spain, and Sweden, and three charged with other crimes after documenting or challenging abuse against migrants.

Responding to our findings Thomas Huddleston, research coordinator at the Migration Policy Group think-tank in Brussels, said: “OpenDemocracy’s database captures not only the most shocking cases of criminalisation, but also so many insidious cases of intimidation and harassment on many other grounds”.

He added: “Europe’s main civil society groups and researchers are working together to dig into this database in order to demand action after the elections from the new European Commission and Parliament”.