The border between Italy and Slovenia is located on the hills above Trieste. If you walk through it at night, you can see the lights of the city shine on to the sea. It may seem like a dream come true. Or the beginning of a nightmare.

On an internal EU border – the one between Italy and Slovenia, a few kilometers from Trieste, migrants who manage to cross the border risk being stopped by Italian law enforcement and sent back to Bosnia without being allowed to apply for international protection. The Ministry of the Interior calls these operations “Informal readmissions” and introduced them in May 2020. A ruling by the Civil Court of Rome forced the Ministry to change its policy: refoulements could not be made. This practice was stopped, until November 28 2022, when the Ministry Piantedosi restarted them. How do these operations take place? What happens to the migrants? The stories of migrants who have experienced refoulements and readmissions are interwoven with the videos recorded by the migrants themselves on their smartphones during their long journeys, as well as with the increasingly contradictory responses of the institutions. Meanwhile, in an abandoned house in Bihac, Bosnia, a group of Pakistani and Afghan migrants want to leave to reach Italy. What will happen to them? What response will Italy and the other EU Member States give? Will they continue to defy their own law to turn away migrants they consider illegal?