SAMOS, Greece: Greece on Monday began moving asylum seekers to the first of several new EU-funded “closed” camps on its islands, despite activists complaining that controls on access are too harsh.
A double barbed-wire fence surrounds the camp on Samos island, a facility for 3,000 people that also has surveillance cameras, X-ray scanners and magnetic doors.
During the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016, the previous camp on Samos sheltered nearly 7,000 asylum seekers despite being built to take just 680, and campaigners had long denounced conditions as deplorable.
“Today is a historic day... a day of joy for us,” Manos Logothetis of the Greek migration ministry told state TV ERT on Samos.
Logothetis told AFP that out of some 400 people at the current Vathy camp at Samos, 270 have said they want to move to the new Zervou facility.
At the entrance of the new camp, police lined up the residents, checking them for weapons or dangerous objects, an AFP reporter said. Asylum personnel handed out clean bedsheets and showed the migrants how to use the gate’s magnetic entry cards.
Some of the asylum seekers carried boxes containing stray cats from the old camp, where rats were an ever-present menace.
“People are just angry for what will happen in the new camp, they think that it’s prison, but I don’t think it,” said Didier Tcakonmer, a 28-year-old Cameroonian who has spent more than two years in Samos.
“It will be better than here, no mosquitos, no rats.”
The ministry is prepared to register up to 200 people today and the remainder on Tuesday, Logothetis said.
The Samos camp, which will serve as a pilot for the other so-called closed and controlled access facilities, can only be entered via fingerprint scans and electronic badges.
Gates will remain closed at night and disciplinary measures await those who return after 8:00 pm.
Late on Sunday, a fire broke out in an abandoned part of the Vathy camp — though the ministry said nobody was hurt.
Logothetis told ERT it was common for asylum seekers to sort through their belongings ahead of a camp move and burn anything they did not intend to bring with them.
According to the ministry, all the asylum seekers had been evacuated on Sunday to an empty space near the entrance of the camp as firefighters tackled the blaze.
The new Samos facility is the first of several such camps on five Greek islands created with EU funds.
The EU has committed 276 million euros ($326 million) for the new camps on Greece’s five Aegean islands — Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos — that receive most of the migrant arrivals by sea from neighboring Turkey.
The Leros and Kos camps will open in November, the government said Monday.
Logothetis said the new restricted-access Samos camp offers “safety and humanitarian values,” but rights groups say the measures are too restrictive.
The Samos community, which had for years demanded the relocation of all the migrants to mainland Greece and Europe, has also opposed the construction of the new Zervou camp.
On the nearby island of Lesbos, the similarly overcrowded camp of Moria was destroyed in two fires that left 13,000 without shelter for several days.
Greece begins moving migrants to new ‘closed’ camp
https://arab.news/v5dsr
Greece begins moving migrants to new ‘closed’ camp
- The Samos camp, which will serve as a pilot for the other so-called closed and controlled access facilities, can only be entered via fingerprint scans and electronic badges
- The EU has committed €276 million for the new camps on Greece’s five Aegean islands — Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos — that receive most of the migrant arrivals
Second death in Minneapolis crackdown heaps pressure on Trump
- Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city
MINNEAPOLIS: The Trump administration faced intensifying pressure Sunday over its mass immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, after federal agents shot dead a second US citizen and graphic cell phone footage again contradicted officials’ immediate description of the incident.
Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city, less than three weeks after an immigration officer fired on Renee Good, also 37, killing her in her car.
President Donald Trump’s administration quickly claimed that Pretti had intended to harm the federal agents — as it did after Good’s death — pointing to a pistol it said was discovered on him.
However, video shared widely on social media and verified by US media showed Pretti never drawing a weapon, with agents firing around 10 shots at him seconds after he was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant and thrown to the ground.
The video further inflamed ongoing protests in Minneapolis against the presence of federal agents, with around 1,000 people participating in a demonstration Sunday.
After top officials described Pretti as an “assassin” who had assaulted the agents, Pretti’s parents issued a statement Saturday condemning the administration’s “sickening lies” about their son.
Asked Sunday what she would say to Pretti’s parents, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said: “Just that I’m grieved for them.”
“I truly am. I can’t even imagine losing a child,” she told Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.”
She said more clarity would come as an investigation progresses.
US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also said an investigation was necessary to get a full understanding of the killing.
Asked if agents had already removed the pistol from Pretti when they fired on him, Blanche said: “I do not know. And nobody else knows, either. That’s why we’re doing an investigation.”
‘Joint’ probe
Their comments came after multiple senators from Trump’s Republican Party called for a thorough probe into the killing, and for cooperation with local authorities.
“There must be a full joint federal and state investigation,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said.
The Trump administration controversially excluded local investigators from a probe into Good’s killing.
Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz posed a question directly to the president during a press briefing Sunday, asking: “What’s the plan, Donald Trump?“
“What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?“
Thousands of federal immigration agents have been deployed to heavily Democratic Minneapolis for weeks, after conservative media reported on alleged fraud by Somali immigrants.
Trump has repeatedly amplified the racially tinged accusations, including on Sunday when he posted on his Truth Social platform: “Minnesota is a Criminal COVER UP of the massive Financial Fraud that has gone on!“
The city, known for its bitterly cold winters, has one of the country’s highest concentrations of Somali immigrants.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pushed back against Trump’s claim, telling reporters “it’s not about fraud, because if he sent people who understand forensic accounting, we’d be having a different conversation. But he’s sending armed masked men.”
Court order
Since “Operation Metro Surge” began, many residents have carried whistles to notify others of the presence of immigration agents, while sometimes violent skirmishes have broken out between the officers and protesters.
Local authorities have sued the federal government seeking a court order to suspend the operation, with a first hearing set for Monday.
Recent polling has shown voters increasingly upset with Trump’s domestic immigration operations, as videos of masked agents seizing people off sidewalks — including children — and dramatic stories of US citizens being detained proliferate.
Barack and Michelle Obama on Sunday forcefully condemned Pretti’s killing, saying in a statement it should be a “wake-up call” that core US values “are increasingly under assault.”
The former president and first lady blasted Trump and his government as seeming “eager to escalate the situation.”
