The Trump administration has carried out nearly 10,000 summary deportations or “expulsions” since March 21, using emergency public health measures during the coronavirus outbreak that have given U.S. Customs and Border Protection broad authority to bypass immigration laws, CBP officials said Thursday.
The measures have allowed the agency to quickly turn away most unauthorized migrants — sending them back across the U.S.-Mexico border. The moves have dramatically slashed the number of...
Non-national migrant rescue ships will no longer be able to dock in Italy, after the country declared its ports were not safe due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Given the spread of Covid-19, Italian ports cannot guarantee the necessary prerequisites to be qualified as 'places of safety,'" the government decree says.
While it does not mention migrants specifically, the order refers to search and rescue operations, which pluck thousands of migrants from the Mediterranean each year...
Officials in Greece have placed a second migrant camp near Athens under lockdown after an Afghan resident tested positive for the coronavirus, the migration ministry said.
Officials said the camp in Malakasa, some 38 kilometres (24 miles) northeast of Athens, was placed under "full sanitary isolation" for 14 days, with no one allowed to enter or leave.
A migration ministry source said the Malakasa facility currently shelters over 1,700 people.
The ministry said the 53-...
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic breached their obligations under EU law by refusing to take in refugees.
The ECJ says in its ruling that these countries had failed to accept their share of 120,000 asylum seekers who had arrived in Italy and Greece, under a relocation programme agreed by the European Council in 2015.
It also finds Poland and the Czech Republic guilty of failing to fulfil their obligations under an earlier...
The casinos are deserted and thousands of hotel rooms are empty. But when Las Vegas, gripped by the coronavirus, needed space for a temporary homeless shelter, officials chose a location that does not have walls, or even a roof: an outdoor parking lot.
The City of Las Vegas and Clark County on Saturday opened the shelter, on the upper floor of a convention center parking lot, after the temporary closure of a 500-person homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities after a homeless man...
Crowded tents, makeshift shacks, cramped containers, unsanitary bathroom facilities and a lack of hot water for cleaning and laundry.
In Greece’s camps, refugees and migrants are surviving conditions like these at a time when the novel coronavirus COVID-19 spreads throughout the country and the world.
Starting in late 2016, Arash Hampay, who now works as part of a humanitarian collective in Athens, spent eight months in the notorious Moria refugee camp before he eventually...
Greece has called for "urgent" EU backing to prepare for a possible coronavirus outbreak in migrant camps, a minister said Friday.
"This sort of case could have dramatic consequences. It is extremely important to act in a timely manner to avert such a possibility," junior migration minister Giorgos Koumoutsakos told EU internal affairs ministers in a teleconference Friday.
"For this reason, we feel it is necessary to have urgent EU backing to address this challenge,"...
Experts and activists have warned that about one million Rohingya refugees living in the crowded and cramped camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar are vulnerable to coronavirus infections.
The wretched conditions in the camps, where most of the Rohingya Muslims arrived in 2017 to escape a Myanmar military crackdown across the nearby border, are fertile ground for any disease, experts say.
The public in other countries is being told to keep two metres (six feet) apart. That is the...
Thousands of families seeking asylum are stranded at the Turkey-Greece border for the past 26 days in the hope of entering Europe and the excruciating wait is taking its toll on children.
Among other hard realities of everyday life, the children have to brave the gas canisters thrown at them by the Greek border forces. The cold weather coupled with sporadic rain, often makes it impossible for them to lie down for a rest as the tents often fill with rainwater.
All the day the...
Greek authorities have denied the right to asylum of at least 625 people on the island of Lesbos and transported many to a closed center, with conditions that are unknown, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated Friday.
Underlining that Greek authorities prevent asylum-seekers access to services and plan transfers to mainland detention, the nongovernmental organization urged Greece in a written statement on their webpage to grant asylum.
HRW stressed that “Greek authorities have...
Greek authorities have denied at least 625 people who arrived on the island of Lesbos between March 1 and 18, 2020 the right to seek asylum, Human Rights Watch said today.
The authorities are detaining 189 new arrivals on the island of Lesbos in unacceptable conditions. The other 436 were transported to a closed center in Malakassa, north of Athens, in conditions that are as yet unknown. On March 1, the Greek government suspended access to asylum for 30 days for people irregularly...
Greek security forces at the border continue to use brutal violence against refugees and migrants trying to cross the border. In the latest attempt, Greek border units started to use “green laser” to damage migrants’ eyes to stop their efforts.
As 22 days passed since Turkey decided not to prevent migrants from trying to cross the European border, refugees and others have been waiting to enter Greece from Turkey’s western Edirne province, despite Greek violence and harsh conditions....
The Trump administration is considering immediately returning any foreigners caught at the US-Mexico border to Mexico, arguing that the step is necessary to combat the fast-spreading coronavirus, according to two administration officials.
The measure, which remains under discussion, would apply to migrants caught crossing the illegally outside ports of entry and would not affect legal immigration or commercial traffic, the officials said.
However, two other officials, with the...
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has called for the immediate evacuation of asylum seekers in squalid camps on the Greek islands saying it could cause a coronavirus outbreak.
“The overcrowded and horrific living conditions in the camps - or hotspots - on the Greek islands provide the perfect storm for a COVID-19 outbreak,” the international humanitarian organization said in a statement on Thursday using the official name of the virus.
Earlier this week, a Greek citizen was...
The Greek government is detaining migrants in secret at an extrajudicial location before expelling them to Turkey without due process, as part of several hard-line measures to seal its border, contravening international law.
According to a report from the New York Times, several migrants have reported having been captured, stripped of their belongings, beaten and expelled from Greece without being given a chance to claim asylum or speak to a lawyer, in an illegal process known in...