By STEPHEN FIDLER
The European Union agreed Tuesday to send a rapid-response border force to help Greece patrol its land frontier with Turkey, as local Greek law enforcement has been overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of illegal immigrants entering the 27-nation bloc.
Immigrants at the train station in Nea Vissa, north of Orestiada, Greece, a main crossing point from Turkey.
Ilkka Laitinen, head of Frontex, the Warsaw-based agency coordinating management of the EU’s external borders, signed a decision Tuesday to send in the rapid-intervention force for its first deployment since it was created in 2007. The force can call on 500 to 600 border agents from EU member states, who will wear their national uniforms and can be armed.
Greece requested help Sunday, after its own border forces couldn’t cope with the influx.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Frontex was carrying out an assessment to establish what size the force should be and what assets, such as dogs and vehicles, would be needed. It isn’t clear when the force will arrive.
Immigration into the EU is on a downward trend because of the sluggish European economy—but more immigrants than ever are choosing to enter the bloc by land rather than sea. Once inside the EU, people can move across most national borders—with a few exceptions, such as the U.K.—without having to go through immigration controls.
The focus on the Greek land border comes as authorities clamp down on sea crossings in the Mediterranean. In the second quarter, 90% of the people trying to enter the EU illegally through Greece were detected at the land border, compared with 65% in the first quarter.
Frontex noted an eightfold rise in the second quarter from the first in the number of North Africans trying to get into the EU overland from Turkey. People from North African countries used to get to the EU largely through Spain and Italy. Large numbers of Afghan nationals and some Somalis are also using the Greek entry point.
Libya has increased its surveillance of migrants, although in June Tripoli ejected the United Nations refugee agency that was monitoring 13,000 refugees and asylum seekers in its territory who had attempted to enter Europe but were stopped, many on the high seas. Stepped-up Libyan and Italian sea patrols are limiting crossings using a traditional route into the EU via Sicily and southern Italy. Spain also signed agreements with Senegal and Mauritania resulting in increased monitoring by those governments, which has limited immigration from these countries.
Many clandestine entrants don’t have papers and claim to be from another country—many North Africans, for instance, claim to be Afghan—, making it difficult to repatriate them.
Manfred Nowak, a senior United Nations official, said last week that immigrants had overcrowded Greek prisons and overwhelmed law enforcement. He said some immigrants were being detained in degrading conditions, and cited numerous allegations of beatings by police officers.
After a 10-day visit, Mr. Nowak said Greek border stations, police stations and migrant detention centers were in “a critical state” and that there was a backlog of 52,000 cases of people seeking asylum in Greece. The Greek government shouldn’t have to bear the burden on its own, he said. “This is a truly European problem which needs a joint European solution.”
In the second quarter of this year, Greek patrols detected 9,500 attempted illegal border crossings into Greece from Turkey, out of a total 26,500 detections at border-crossing points all over the EU, according to data from Frontex. A similar number were caught crossing into Greece from Albania, probably to do temporary farm work before returning home. Most people are trying to cross within a few miles of the town of Orestiada, on the border with Turkey.
“Given that in July 2010, 150 to 200 illegal migrants were detected each day at Orestiada and that very few are currently to be returned [sent back] to Turkey, it is likely that the Greek authorities will continue to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of arrivals,” Frontex said in a report published last month. It predicted numbers would increase further if action wasn’t taken.
Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com
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