Albania’s border with Greece already forms part of a key migrant route into Europe through western Balkans, with thousands of crossings typically by Syrians, Pakistanis and Iraqis hoping to reach countries such as Germany and the UK. Zhulali says efforts to stem the flow have been ineffective and doubts that the guards policing the new camps will prove any different.
“I know they are going to escape. Everybody knows that,” Zhulali says.
Albanians who have emigrated in the last decade have mainly left the north because Rama left it in such a poor state, she argues.
“We’ve had people who have come by boat to your country. Do you know what that means?” she says. “People are risking their lives just to escape Albania. That tells you how bad things are at home.
“Instead of changing things here, Mr Rama is just trying to keep everyone silent inside and buying the silence of EU governments.”
The exodus of Albanians abroad provokes some troubling questions about the new detention centres.
“People got upset when they saw the eight-metre-tall walls because they understood the conditions their sons and daughters had experienced abroad,” Preka, the head of the elders in Gjadër, says.
“‘This is a prison. It would be better if the migrants stayed with us in the village,’ they said. They feel very bad.”
‘I am in favour of more people coming here’
If Meloni does succeed and if other countries do seek to replicate the model, Albanians are prepared. In Shëngjin, the locals say they will readily take more asylum seekers.
“I am ready to give a room in my home to these people if they ask,” says Dushku, the shopkeeper.
Demo, at the local town hall, says he would happily see other countries start sending their asylum seekers to Albania.
“Personally I am in favour of more people coming here and helping them. We have been emigrants since the 1990s,” he says.
In Gjadër, villagers who were initially sceptical of outsiders are now more concerned about the Italian courts torpedoing Meloni’s scheme.
“The people are worried about what they’re hearing. They are thinking, ‘We will lose our salaries,’” says Preka.
In the shadow of the Kakariq facility, Rexhep says the disruption of the construction work has already been forgotten. In fact, he cannot help but admire the “fine work”.
“It looks very nice,” he says of the slick metal fence funded by the Italian taxpayer.
His own home is modest even by local standards: a small red concrete house with a donkey grazing outside, a rusty vehicle and a chained dog barking away.