Fleeing North Africa and Landing in an Italian Limbo

Perhaps they could have just walked.

“Oh, let them go,” a plainclothes officer standing near the camp’s gate said loudly, his metal badge visible on his breast pocket.

The Italian government hastily built this camp in the Puglia region, the heel of Italy’s boot, last weekend to help hold immigrants evacuated from Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island south of Sicily that is jammed with thousands of immigrants from North Africa who have crossed the Mediterranean in fishing boats and are now sleeping in the open air.

The Puglia center, which holds about 1,300 people, is an example of the logistical challenges that Italy — and Europe — face as they prepare for thousands of immigrants fleeing the unrest in North Africa. So far, most of them have been Tunisians seeking work, but last weekend the first boats arrived from Libya carrying Somalis and Eritreans who had been working there.

To some Italians, the tent camp is as much a political statement as a humanitarian reality, the product of a center-right government intent on demonstrating that the immigration situation has become an emergency that requires a coordinated European response. If the authorities wanted to dramatize the problem, some say, what better way than with photographs of immigrants escaping from crowded holding areas?

Others see the camp as a bargaining chip in a diplomatic standoff between Italy and France, the former colonial power in Tunisia and the place where most of the Tunisians say they want to go.

Under European Union law, the country where immigrants arrive is responsible for determining their status. Italy has argued that it should not bear the brunt of the new arrivals just because it is so close to North Africa. In a television interview on Wednesday, the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, criticized France for its “lack of solidarity” after it returned more than 500 immigrants to Italy after they were caught trying to cross the border into France.

“It’s a political statement to France: ‘You want to start the war in Libya? We’ll give you immigrants,’?” said Tonio Tondo, a journalist following the immigration situation for the daily La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno. Italy, which colonized Libya in the early 20th century, stands to lose billions in investments there because of the allied intervention. Italy is taking part in the mission, but it was championed by France.

Here in Manduria, officials seem nonchalant about the escapes. Asked why the Italian authorities appeared to do so little to stop the immigrants’ jumping the fence, Giuseppe Caruso, the police chief of Palermo and the special commissioner for the immigration emergency, asked rhetorically: “What should we do? Should we shoot them?”

But the camp is rapidly emerging as a problem. The town’s residents protested on Wednesday, calling for it to be closed because so many immigrants had escaped. Then both the mayor and Italy’s deputy interior minister, Alfredo Mantovano, tendered their resignations after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in a visit to Lampedusa on Wednesday that an additional 1,400 immigrants would be brought to Manduria. On Monday, Mr. Mantovano had pledged that the camp would not hold more than 1,500 people.

With its neat rows of blue tents on freshly laid gravel, and dozens of uniformed officials, the camp shows the power of the Italian state. But it also reveals its fissures. The camp is a legal no-man’s land. The new arrivals’ status — are they illegal immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers? — is uncertain, making it nearly impossible for the Italian authorities to process, repatriate or detain them.

Before the influx began in January, bringing about 18,000 people through Lampedusa, the immigrants who arrived there were held on the island for a few days before being sent to formal immigration or asylum centers on the mainland. The Interior Ministry says those centers are now almost full as Italy struggles with a bureaucratic backlog.

Under Italian law, immigrants can be held for up to 180 days to determine their status, and much longer if they are seeking asylum. If their arrival is deemed to be illegal, and they would not be subject to persecution in their home countries, they can be sent home. But Italy’s repatriation accords with Tunisia and Libya have broken down.

“We’re waiting for a directive,” said Antonio Calcagni, the chief of the immigration office at the Police Department in the nearby port city of Taranto, as he stood outside the Manduria camp. “Different countries are working on it,” he added.

The immigrants have grown frustrated, too. “We’ve been here for three days,” said Omar Naim, 24, a Tunisian, as he peered through the fence. “They haven’t done anything for us.”

Italian officials traveled last week to Tunisia, which still lacks a functioning government, to persuade the authorities there to honor the repatriation accords.

“What’s the legal status of the camp? That’s a good question,” said Nichi Vendola, the president of the Puglia region and a leading member of the center-left opposition. “Is it a place for determining who is an illegal immigrant? A place to receive asylum seekers? A hybrid place?” He added, “The confusion is the fruit of the ideological prejudices of the Northern League, which dominates the Berlusconi government.”

That party, the most powerful in the governing center-right coalition, has long drawn on fears of illegal immigration. Asked on Tuesday what should be done about the immigrants, the Northern League’s colorful leader, Umberto Bossi, used a phrase that politely translates as “get them out of our faces.”

The interior minister, Roberto Maroni, a member of the Northern League, has been more diplomatic, but has repeatedly said the European Union has abandoned Italy. The Italian government is not alone in seeking a more coordinated European response. Laura Boldrini, spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, said it was important to distinguish between the “economic migrants” from Tunisia who were seeking work in Europe and those fleeing the fighting in Libya.

“In the event of a mass influx of asylum seekers from Libya, the U.N.H.C.R. recommends that member states receive them and give them temporary protection,” Ms. Boldrini said. “It would be good to have a positive sign from Europe,” she added. “That could also help reduce tensions and calm down tones in Italy.”

Back in Manduria, as bulldozers worked the ground and trucks carted in generators, the camp seemed increasingly less temporary. Mr. Calcagni, the immigration chief for the Taranto police, looking resigned, cited an often-used Italian saying: “There’s nothing more definitive than something provisional.”