An Italian town has been called “shameful” and “unconstitutional” after banning reception centres for asylum seekers from being placed near schools.

The urban plan approved by the council of Calolziocorte, Lombardy, this week asserts that “welcome centres for migrants must not be located within 150 metres of schools”. The small town of 15,000 is currently home to about 20 asylum seekers.

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The town’s mayor, Marco Ghezzi, a member of the anti-immigration and extreme rightwing League party led by the interior minister, Matteo Salvini, defended the decision by claiming that welcome centres could be havens for drug dealing.

“In another nearby [welcome centre], there was drug dealing,” Ghezzi told Radio Capital. “Therefore, we took this decision as a preventive measure and to safeguard our schools. There is a risk that welcome centres double as drug-dealing hubs, and it is an act of common sense to place these facilities in the best place possible for the community and to favour integration.”

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Ghezzi said “there is no discrimination, no drug emergency; it is simply a matter of common sense”.

Opposition parties and human rights groups expressed their indignation, calling the regulation a “discriminatory act”.

Senator Andrea Marcucci said it was “apartheid, an abomination that must be stopped”. The Democratic party senator Eugenio Comincini wrote on Twitter: “In #Calolziocorte the majority League city council approved a scandalous regulation that separates the territory into zones which restrict access by migrants. We are witnessing a disgraceful ghettoization! I will make a formal parliamentary appeal to Minister #Salvini to clarify his party’s position.”

It is not the first time that anti-immigrant League party mayors have garnered attention for their policies regarding asylum seekers. In 2017 the city council of Palazzago, in the Bergamo province, approved a local ordinance which required anyone accommodating migrants to notify the authorities. Transgressors faced fines of up to €15,000. In 2015, in a small town in the province of Pavia, the local mayor forbade asylum seekers from exercising on the city’s football pitch.