Since the beginning of the year, OPU, in cooperation with the Human Rights Forum and the Matiaško law firm, has filed a total of three constitutional complaints regarding the detention of children. This will be only the third time in its history that the Constitutional Court will deal with the issue of immigration detention of children. If the complainants succeed, the harmful practice of restricting the personal freedom of families with children in Czech immigration detention centers may be abolished or significantly curtailed.
The first case concerns a family with six children aged 2, 4, 8, 11, 12, and 14. The authorities held this family in a detention facility for 70 days. The second case involved a family with three children aged 5, 11, and 17, whom the authorities detained for 81 days. Police placed the families in immigration detention after they arrived in the Czech Republic without travel documents or visas. The police detained them with the aim of handing them over to Croatia, which, according to European law, is responsible for assessing their asylum applications. However, the families did not know that they had applied for asylum in Croatia. Some of them complained about the conditions in the camps for foreigners there, mentioning broken windows, dirt, and cockroaches. Croatian police officers only took their fingerprints and then, according to their statements, told them they could go wherever they wanted.
Under Czech law, families with children can be detained in a facility for foreigners for up to 90 days.
They are not allowed to leave the facility – the authorities temporarily confiscate their phones and finances, significantly limiting their ability to communicate with the outside world. The Czech legal system does not set a minimum age limit for detention, so the state restricts the personal freedom of even very young children, including infants. Foreigners must also pay the costs of their involuntary detention. Foreign research shows that restrictions on personal freedom in immigration detention also negatively affect older children – causing them anxiety and potentially exacerbating the trauma they brought with them from their country of origin.
The Constitutional Court will address the issue of immigration detention of children for only the third time in its history.
In the previous two cases, it did not find this practice to be generally contrary to the constitutional order of the Czech Republic and international law (file no. III. ÚS 3289/14, IV. ÚS 1721/20). However, international case law on this issue has evolved in recent years. According to the ECHR, the detention of children is an extreme measure that can only be used in very exceptional cases, with a guarantee of good conditions of detention and for the shortest necessary period of time. In the past, the ECHR has found the detention of families with children, which was significantly shorter and lasted, for example, only a few days, to be disproportionate. According to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, immigration detention of children is always contrary to the best interests of the child and is therefore ruled out as disproportionately harsh. The complainants therefore filed a motion with the Constitutional Court to repeal parts of the Foreigners Residence Act. Alternatively, they proposed that the court refer a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Constitutional Court registered the constitutional complaint under file numbers I. ÚS 800/25, II.ÚS 1287/25, and IV. ÚS 1487/25.
Contact for media:
Zuzana Pavelková
zuzana.pavelkova@opu.cz,
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