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The Italian Left and the Movement for Illegal Aliens Civil Liberties In this article we analyze the formation since the late 1990s of a protest movement in Italy against the administrative detention of illegal aliens and the rising importance of this issue on the centerleft government agenda since its election in April 2006. To do so, we take interactive approach to the political process, refusing to view social movements solely as anti-institutional phenomena. After having pointed out the importance of the current debate within the government coalition with regard to the conversion of the CPTAs (temporary stay and assistance centers), we describe the emergence of radical protest action against detention over the past 15 years, presenting the composition of these mobilizations and their repertoires of action. The recent unification on the grounds of their common political culture and grammar is then described. Lastly, returning to the matter of the importance that detention has recently taken in the left's internal debates and attempting to identify the causes of it, we describe the new relations that have been established between parties and the immigrant civil rights movement, between centerleft party apparatuses and their peripheries, as well as the structure of the political opportunities they entail.