IDENTIFICATION AND RELOCATION PROCESS

Usually, refugees lacking documentation are identified by the authorities through police activities: such as roadblocks, raids, random checks and workplace inspections.

These are not, however, the only circumstances in which refugees are arrested, detained and subsequently relocated or deported. In some cases, unauthorized gatherings have led to the arrest and relocation of significant numbers of Syrian refugees. In others, the arrest took place once the individuals had spontaneously visited a police station to carry out bureaucratic procedures concerning their documentation.

After being arrested, refugees are transferred to the local police station, where they are held for the time necessary to process the case, a period ranging from a few hours to several days.
Indeed, Jordanian police do not seem to follow a unique standardized procedure: some Syrians reported being transferred several times between different police stations. Many, on the other hand, reported having being detained in proper prisons, while minors reported have been kept in juvenile detention centers for several days.

Many passed through the Raba al Sarhan Registration Center, while others were transferred directly from the police station or the detention center to Azraq camp.

On top of the already traumatic experience of being abruptly relocated to a refugee camp, it should also be considered that authorities rarely allow relocated individuals any time to collect belongings and make arrangements for the rest of the family: data gathered by INTERSOS indicates that in the vast majority of relocations (61.3%), no notice has been given at all. In the remaining 38.7% of cases in which notice was given more than half of the time (57.2%) the notice period was 24 hours or less.