Tag Archives: asylum

Eight people flee U.S. border patrol to seek asylum in Canada

Canadian police assist child from Sudan family fleeing to Canada

(This version of the Feb. 17 story corrects the headline and first paragraph to eight people from nine)

By Christinne Muschi

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. (Reuters) – Eight asylum-seekers, including four children, barely made it across the Canadian border on Friday as a U.S. border patrol officer tried to stop them and a Reuters photographer captured the scene.

As a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer seized their passports and questioned a man in the front passenger seat of a taxi that had pulled up to the border in Champlain, New York, four adults and four young children fled the cab and ran to Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the other side.

One by one they scrambled across the snowy gully separating the two countries. RCMP officers watching from the other side helped them up, lifting the younger children and asking a woman, who leaned on her fellow passenger as she walked, if she needed medical care.

The children looked back from where they had come as the U.S. officer held the first man, saying his papers needed to be verified.

The man turned to a pile of belongings and heaved pieces of luggage two at a time into the gully — enormous wheeled suitcases, plastic shopping bags, a black backpack.

“Nobody cares about us,” he told journalists. He said they were all from Sudan and had been living and working in Delaware for two years.

The RCMP declined on Friday to confirm the nationalities of the people. A Reuters photo showed that at least one of their passports was Sudanese.

The man then appeared to grab their passports from the U.S. officer before making a run for the border. The officer yelled and gave chase but stopped at the border marker. Canadian police took hold of the man’s arm as he crossed.

The border patrol officer told his counterpart that the man was in the United States illegally and that he would have detained him.

Officers on both sides momentarily eyed the luggage strewn in the snow before the U.S. officer took it, and a walker left on the road, to the border line.

The RCMP carried the articles to their vehicles, and the people piled in to be driven to a nearby border office to be interviewed by police and to make a refugee claim.

People seeking refugee status have been pouring over the Canada-U.S. border as the United States looks to tighten its policies on refugees and illegal immigrants. Asylum-seekers sneak across because even if they are caught, they can make a claim in Canada; if they make a claim at a border crossing, they are turned away.

(Writing by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

German agency working to clear backlog of 435,000 asylum cases

rejected asylum seeker returns to middle east

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s migration agency hopes to clear a backlog of 435,000 asylum cases within months, the organization’s new director said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday.

Jutta Cordt, who took over as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) this month, told the newspaper her top priorities were to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, deepen integration, and step up deportations of those whose applications were denied.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring,” the paper quoted Cordt as saying.

She told the paper the agency had received 40 million euros ($42.57 million) in additional funding in 2017 to work on repatriation processing and wanted to start that process sooner.

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially,” Cordt told the newspaper.

More than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany since the beginning of 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. Polls show that migration will be a key issue in September’s national election.

The issue of repatriation – and better identification of refugees – has taken on new urgency after a spate of Islamist attacks carried out by failed asylum seekers, including Anis Amri, the 24-year-old Tunisian man who rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Amri, who was shot dead in Italy, had lived in Germany under at least 14 different names, police have said.

Cordt told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper in a separate interview that local authorities should be taking fingerprints from migrants to better track their identities and avoid multiple asylum applications.

Migrants are currently fingerprinted by police if they cross the German border without a valid passport, then again in a migrant intake center and for a third time when they file an asylum application.

BAMF has said that it has now biometric data on all migrants, but it is not clear how many multiple applications for asylum benefits have been filed.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)

Protesters attack EU asylum offices on Greece’s Lesbos

Migrant camp in Greece

ATHENS (Reuters) – Asylum-seekers attacked the premises of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) on the island of Lesbos on Monday, protesting against delays in dealing with asylum claims, Greek and EU authorities said.

About 70 people, most from Pakistan and Bangladesh, threw rocks and burning blankets at EASO containers inside the Moria migrant camp, damaging three of those, a Greek police spokesman for the island said.

EASO Spokesman Jean-Pierre Schembri said protesters had hurled petrol bombs while interviews with asylum-seekers were taking place. EASO staff had evacuated the camp.

“They burned our offices this morning … The process will not resume for the time being,” he said. “We have to evaluate security issues and in our view we need more presence of Greece police to be in place.”

More than 15,000 asylum-seekers are living in overcrowded camps on Greek islands close to Turkey, stranded by a European deal with Ankara to seal the main route into the continent for a million refugees and migrants last year.

Asylum-seekers wait for weeks or months for their claims to be processed.

There are nearly 6,000 asylum-seekers on Lesbos alone, nearly double the capacity its two camps can handle. Violence and protests at the conditions there are frequent.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Thousands flee fire at Greek migrant camp as tensions flare

Migrants stand among the remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday night after fire swept through tents and housing cabins during violence among residents, police said.

The fire was over by mid-day on Tuesday at the Moria camp which houses the 5,700 migrants on the island and many people had returned, though children had been transferred to other facilities, police said.

No casualties were reported from the fire and its cause was not clear.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, linked the fire to poor living conditions and a sense of insecurity among many of the residents.

Refugees and migrants on Lesbos are stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims have been processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over tough living conditions.

Greek media said the clashes on Monday erupted among residents following a rumor that hundreds of people would be deported.

Roland Schoenbauer, UNHCR’s spokesman in Greece, said people were “sick of waiting” in the camps. “They don’t know when their asylum claims will be processed. Some people feel they don’t have enough information,” he said.

A police official in Athens said two riot police squads had been deployed to the island.

Nearly 60 percent of the Moria camp, including tents and metal-roofed cabins, had been destroyed by the fire, a police official said. Work was underway on Tuesday to set up new tents, Police Minister Nikos Toskas said.

At least nine people were arrested on accusations of damaging property and causing unrest and were expected to appear before a prosecutor, a police official in Athens said.

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, September 20, 2016. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

OVERCROWDING

Panos Navrozidis, Greece director of aid agency International Rescue Committee, said the camp had been operating at over-capacity for months, with people crammed into the facility with limited access to water, and in conditions that do not meet humanitarian standards.

He criticized the system to process claims as “opaque and inconsistent” and said preferential treatment based on nationality led to tensions within the community.

Thousands have applied for asylum and the wait is long, ranging from weeks to months. Just over 500 people have been deported to Turkey since March but none of those who have requested asylum were among those, Greece says.

Despite a slowdown in arrivals from Turkey compared to last year, more than 13,500 migrants and refugees are now living on eastern Aegean islands, nearly double a capacity of 7,450.

“The situation is difficult,” Christiana Kalogirou, prefect of the north Aegean region, told Greek TV. “There is a great need for decongestion of the islands … in the future things could become much more difficult,” she said.

Including those on the islands, there are 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who made risky journeys in flimsy inflatable boats.

(Additional reporting Renee Maltezou; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Austria takes another baby step towards tougher asylum rules

Migrants wait to cross the border from Slovenia into Spielfeld in Austria, F

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria has taken its next step, albeit small, toward introducing tougher rules on immigration that will allow it to turn away asylum seekers at its borders within an hour and also to cap the number of asylum requests it accepts.

The government said on Tuesday it would start next week to collect expert opinions needed to pass an emergency decree necessary to trigger implementation of the new rules.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka wants the emergency decree to be introduced as soon as possible rather than when an agreed yearly cap of 37,500 is reached.

But Chancellory Minister Thomas Drozda said on Tuesday that debating the matter and procedural issues would take at least until late October.

He also said that turning away migrants at the border might be complicated by the fact Austria has not yet agreed on a deportation arrangement with its eastern neighbor Hungary and many other relevant countries.

“It’s a question of whether one wants to or should prepare now for a situation that will possibly occur in November or December,” Drozda told reporters.

Chancellor Christian Kern has not pushed for the implementation of the tougher rules on asylum claims yet and has said he saw little point in starting to do so if this year’s limit would only be reached around late November.

Austria has mostly served as a conduit into Germany for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa but the country of 8.5 million people has also taken in about 110,000 asylum seekers since last summer.

After initially welcoming refugees, the government decided to cap the number of asylum claims it would accept this year and has made family reunification harder for migrants, steps widely criticized by EU states and human rights groups.

Drozda said the number of asylum requests had reached 24,260 at the end of July with requests coming in at a much slower pace than last year.

Austria led efforts that resulted in the closing of the so-called Balkan route from Turkey to northern Europe and is turning away an increasing number of migrants at its southern border with Italy.

Also on Tuesday, the Danish government proposed the adoption of a law that would enable police to reject asylum seekers at the borders in times of crisis such as that in 2015 when thousands of migrants sought to enter the country.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in EU in 2015

Two children gather poppies at a field next to a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some 88,300 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in the European Union in 2015, 13 percent of them children younger than 14, crossing continents without their parents to seek a place of safety, EU data showed on Monday.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe last year. While that was roughly double the 2014 figure, the number of unaccompanied minors quadrupled, statistics agency Eurostat said.

Minors made up about a third of the 1.26 million first-time asylum applications filed in the EU last year.

European Union states disagree on how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two and anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, even in countries that traditionally have a generous approach to helping people seeking refuge.

Four in 10 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden, where some have called for greater checks, suspicious that adults are passing themselves off as children in order to secure protection they might otherwise be denied.

Eurostat’s figures refer specifically to asylum applicants “considered to be unaccompanied minors”, meaning EU states accepted the youngsters’ declared age or established it themselves through age assessment procedures.

More than 90 percent of the minors traveling without a parent or guardian were boys and more than half of them were between 16 and 17 years old. Half were Afghans and the second largest group were Syrians, at 16 percent of the total.

After Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Austria followed as the main destinations for unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.

Seeking to stem the influx of people, the EU has struck a deal with Turkey to stop people crossing from there into the bloc. Turkey hosts some 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)