A woman and her child signed up for “voluntary return” – a homeless shelter in Mauritius was their option

Talat Ogeer sounded exhausted. 

She was calling from a hospital. She’s 22 weeks pregnant, and she’s been bleeding, said Ogeer, last month. 

“I’m waiting for a doctor, I don’t know what’s happening inside of me,” she said.

In 2021, Ogeer sold her jewellery and borrowed money from friends to afford travelling to Europe with her son, who was then four years old, she said in a letter sent about a week after the call.

They touched down in the United Kingdom and then travelled to Ireland from there, her letter said.

Ogeer and her son sought asylum here. But besides a brief victory at the court, their asylum case has passed through a carousel of rejections.

Last summer, when her final refusal letter arrived in the mail, her lawyer suggested she sign up to the Assisted Voluntary Return Programme (AVRP), a repatriation scheme managed for Ireland’s Department of Justice by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). 

Ogeer didn’t feel safe going back, but she contacted IOM out of desperation, she said. 

“And then I understand that I will go in a homeless centre,” said Ogeer during the phone call from the hospital, last month. 

A text message from an IOM worker to Ogeer sent in July 2025 says that's not a permanent solution either. 

“You are hereby also informed the shelter is a temporary solution, and you will need to seek accommodation elsewhere,” it said.

Although voluntary return leaflets circulated in asylum centres around the country don’t spell out how much of the scheme’s promised money is paid in cash, the text to Ogeer says she can get €400 on the day of departure. 

The rest, meaning €1,600, “is in-kind (i.e. you need to come up with a business plan that will help you reintegrate in Mauritius. It can be used for both business and education, and it can be used both for yourself and your son,” said the text.

Valon Junuzi of Malmö University in Sweden, who has just published an academic paper probing voluntary return programmes, said that even if the IOM spends the money on, say, equipment for a new business, people can’t sell it for cash, as part of their agreement with the agency.

Ogeer decided to drop out of the scheme, she said. 

The IOM does not return people to countries grappling with war and conflict. But Ogeer’s case suggests that it doesn’t advise against it even if people are going back to precarious settings and uncertain prospects.

A spokesperson for the IOM has not yet addressed queries sent last week asking why. 

Don’t think twice, it’s alright 

Junuzi, whose research in part probes the scheme’s understanding of vulnerability, said it glosses over root causes.

Reinforcing instead the “neo-liberal” notion that everyone can prosper with a bit of entrepreneurship and a small fund to support ambition, he said.

But “they don’t question the context of vulnerabilities”, said Junuzi on a video call recently.

That ties in with another problematic assumption at play, which is the idea that every person whose asylum claim was thrown out got a fair decision, he said.

“Like, maybe in this case if the authorities decided that this woman doesn’t deserve asylum, maybe something went wrong, but the IOM doesn’t question the asylum procedure at all,” said Junuzi. 

That means people end up returning to troubles they had tried to get away from, he said.

We don’t use the D-word here

Much has been written by immigration academics about voluntary return campaigns, highlighting problems with pitching it to people who still have a shot at winning immigration papers. 

Or portraying those who choose to return – not the people who fight the current and try to stay – as resilient and empowered. 

The longer you stay the course, the lower the rate of your voluntary return fund, leaflets sent out to asylum shelters show.

The scheme helps Western states save money on deportation and sidestep the negative media and public scrutiny it can bring, academics have said.

“They just depoliticise expulsion,” said Junuzi of Malmö University. Unlike deportations, the programme faces little media scrutiny, too, he said. 

In the course of his research, Junuzi said, he’d studied how the IOM describes the process of return and reintegration to European immigration officials, who hire its services.

He found that it portrays return and reintegration as a fraught, challenging process to those authorities, but smooth and filled with possibilities in campaigns targeting immigrants, Junuzi said.

“In order to convince immigrants to go back to their countries,” he said. 

In response to previous queries, a spokesperson for the IOM had said that its assisted voluntary return scheme offers a humane, dignified pathway for people to return to their “countries of origin”.

It doesn’t try to convince or pressure anyone, they said.

“Through individual counselling, migrants are empowered to make an informed decision and can withdraw at any point before departure,” the spokesperson had said. 

The protection and well-being of immigrants is at the heart of its mission, they had said.

When it rains

At the moment, Ogeer and her son grapple with poverty in Ireland because she doesn’t have the right to work, she said.

Her boyfriend, who lives in another European country, offered her a bank card, but she uses it sparingly – “for emergency, for medication” – because she is wary of the prospect of becoming too reliant on a man, said Ogeer. 

Back when she was still in the asylum process, she worked at a Spar. Her boss and co-workers were super supportive, she said.

Her boss called her recently. “He said, ‘We need workers like you. You can come back when you get your things sorted,’” Ogeer said.

He had put an endorsement letter on her application to stay, according to her final rejection letter.

He had written that she’s "diligent” and “hard working”, always kind to staff and customers, the rejection letter says.

There’s a pile of other character references too, showing that Ogeer had volunteered a bunch, as lots of people seeking asylum do.

In rejecting the application, an asylum officer acknowledged that Ogeer and her son have found a community here and made lots of friends.

But those connections were “formed during a time when her status was precarious and her length of residency cannot be considered lengthy or exceptional”, the decision letter said.

Weighing Ogeer and her son’s case for staying in Ireland against upholding “the integrity of the immigration system” and the state’s right to “control immigration” and safeguard its “economic well-being”, the officer rejected their petition.

A sentence at the end of the letter says they had considered the “best interest” of Ogeer’s eight-year-old son, Muhammad. 

Ogeer had tried to stop her deportation, but an email from the Department of Justice says she can’t file an application for that because she doesn’t yet have a deportation order. 

Stephen Kirwan, partner and solicitor at the law firm KOD Lyons, said in an email that yes, sitting on a negative final decision without a deportation order means total limbo.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said that “if an element of an applicant’s permission to remain request is still ongoing, a Deportation Order is not signed until this process is complete”. 

Ogeer said maybe because she’d asked a few TDs to talk to the Minister for Justice about their case, that has kept it open.  

And she sees a glimmer of hope in that. She wants to stay and fight, for the sake of her son, she said. “I will do everything to give him a safe, loving life.”

In the meantime, as uncertainty shadows over her life, she is left to wrestle with a fresh loss, too. 

A few days after calling from the hospital back in late March, she wrote to say she’d lost her pregnancy. “My baby passed away,” her text said.