When Ireland deported 24 Pakistanis last September, they sent them off by charter flight. It's a standard format. Police escorted them, a doctor and a translator were on board. And on the morning Irish breakfast - pork sausages for Muslims.

The report of the independent human rights monitor, which was just published, confirms that the whole operation was "essentially humane" but "with a series of problems". The main one: the charter company served them beef-pork to people whose faith forbids it. The police later described it in their own report as "inappropriate".

What happened? The monitor had information that halal food would be available, but "this wasn't mentioned in the flight instructions". All these documents exist, they get passed between institutions, and yet nobody checked before takeoff. That's what's called bureaucracy in empty clothing.

The problems didn't stop at the food. After landing in Islamabad, two of the deportees came back to the plane - one wasn't given his phone back, the other was missing his luggage. What's especially ironic, while boarding in Ireland, one of them was convinced the officer was filming him with a phone. Reassured he wasn't. Later it came out in the report: "it was confirmed that he was indeed being filmed."

On another flight, in November 2025, 52 people were returned to Georgia: 35 men, seven women, and three families with children aged 5 months to 17 years. 113 police officers escorted them. One man was pinned to the ground and restrained before being put on the plane. For a Balkan reader this is a story familiar by form - when institutions have a "procedure" but nobody follows it. Only this isn't Skopje's Interior Ministry, this is the Irish government. And there's a report that officially acknowledges it.