Rightwing MEPs have come under fire after they celebrated a vote aimed at increasing deportations across the EU with chants of “send them back”, leading other lawmakers to respond with cries of “shame on you”.

The heated confrontation in the European parliament came on Wednesday after lawmakers voted 418 to 218 to approve controversial measures aimed at increasing deportations of undocumented people.

The overhaul has been widely criticised by rights groups, including Amnesty International France, who this week described the plans as “absurd, cruel and discriminatory”, and 16 UN experts who recently outlined more than a dozen ways in which the rules could contravene international human rights.

The plans include measures under which people could be detained for up to two years or sent to offshore centres that have been described as potential “human rights black holes”, while also allowing ICE-style immigration to gain a foothold in Europe.

On Wednesday, as an alliance of mostly centre-right and far-right lawmakers joined forces to back the plans, the approval was met with hearty applause in the parliament. Many rightwing MEPs jumped to their feet, a handful of them pumping their fists in the air as they chanted “send them back.”

Seconds later, a second chorus – this time from politicians on the centre-left and left – responded by chanting “shame on you”.

The moment underscored the deep divisions in the European parliament, after elections in 2024 led to a record number of nationalist and far-right MEPs.

The far right’s celebration of the vote was swiftly condemned. Javi López, a Socialist and vice-president of the European parliament, described the plenary session as “disgraceful”. Writing on social media, he added: “As if people were parcels. Families. Minors. Deported to third countries. This is the Europe they are imposing.”

Manus Carlisle, who manages communication for the Left group in parliament, said it was a “dark moment that is likely to go down in EU history”, while the French Renew MEP Laurence Farreng said it was a moment in which “the far right is screaming its hatred”.

Ilaria Salis, an Italian MEP for the Green and Left Alliance who made headlines in 2023 after she was arrested at a counter-demonstration to a neo-Nazi rally in Budapest, described it as “horrifying” on social media.

“The human depravity of a certain political faction truly seems to know no bounds: rejoicing over the deportation of innocent people,” she wrote. “Rejoicing not because someone’s life is improving, but because someone else’s – considered different, inferior, less deserving of rights – is getting worse.”

This, said Salis, was how fascism crept into democratic institutions.

“Today, migrants and racialised people are primarily in the crosshairs – the quintessential scapegoats of the right wing’s vulgar propaganda,” she said. “But tomorrow, if we continue at this pace, it will be the turn of more and more people. It will be the working class, activists, and dissidents – and eventually anyone who does not conform to the order they seek to impose.”

The Socialists and Democrats group warned that the far-right chants were just the first step. “‘Send them back’ is not a migration policy. It is a slogan of fear that paves the way for a much darker future,” it said on social media.

Others, such as Herbert Kickl, the leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), welcomed the moment. Kickl, who in the last elections campaigned using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, characterised it as a show of force for rightwing lawmakers.

“The fact that ‘Send them back!’ was shouted in the plenary hall shows one thing above all: Pressure from the right is having an effect. An important step, but by no means the end of the road,” he said on social media.