Lassaad Jelassi is originally from Tunisia and had been living in Italy for more than 20 years when he was arrested by the police and brought in the Center for Identification and Expulsion (CIE) of Ponte Galeria, Rome. He spent four months there, in what he aptly defines "a modern-day concentration camp": a place where you are deprived of any form of freedom and dignity as a human being, where you are deprived even of your own name and end up being nothing more than a number.

Mario Badagliacca is an Italian photographer and reporter. He has created - in collaboration with LasciateCIEntrare and Archivio Memorie Migranti - the beautiful multimedia project "Letters from the CIE" in order to tell the story of Lassaad and the many others who are stuck in what he calls "a non-country, a painful limbo where human rights are suspended and violence rules."

Shameful places

Centers of Identification and Expulsion are facilities designed to administratively detain third-country nationals awaiting deportation. CIEs are prison-like facilities that are not part of the penitentiary system: who ends up in CIEs, for how long, and how many times is decided by administrative authorities who enjoy wide discretion on the subject.

Ever since their creation in the second half of the '90s, these places have been considered a juridical and administrative irregularity by large portions of civil society. Non-governmental associations such as LasciateCIEntrare have long been campaigning to denounce the abuses that take place inside these structures and ask for their definitive closure.

These shameful places have long been off-limits for journalist and activists and are still very hard to access. The powerful words used by Lassaad, together with the strong images shot by Mario, will take you inside Italy's largest CIE and give you a unique look at the daily lives of the thousands of migrants who find themselves detained in these no man's lands.