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BRUSSELS European Union leaders pushed ahead Thursday with plans to outsource the blocs migration policy challenges by spending billions of euros to improve cooperation from countries that people leave or cross when they set out for Europe.

Long unable to agree on who should take responsibility for migrants when they come and whether other members of the 27-nation EU should be obliged to help, the leaders focused instead on how to prevent people from arriving in the first place.

At their summit in Brussels, they said that mutually beneficial partnerships and cooperation with countries of origin and transit will be intensified. No countries were named but the focus is on northern Africa, from where many migrants set out on dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean Sea to seek a better life or sanctuary in Europe.

The approach will be pragmatic, flexible and tailor-made, the leaders said, and will make use of all available instruments and incentives to persuade the countries to cooperate. Their summit statement was prepared by envoys in advance and was subject to almost no discussion Thursday.

In it, they invited the EUs executive branch, the European Commission to make the best possible use of at least 10% of the NDICI financial envelope, as well as funding under other relevant instruments, for actions related to migration.

The Neighborhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument has a budget of 79.5 billion euros ($95 billion) from 2021-2027, so almost 8 billion euros ($9.5 billion) could be made available for migration purposes.

The money could be used to tackle the root causes that drive people to leave, support refugees and displaced people, build capacity to help countries better manage migration, crack down on human smuggling and boost border controls.

The arrival of well over a million migrants in 2015, many fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq, overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy. It sparked perhaps the EUs biggest-ever political crisis, and disputes over responsibility and solidarity continue today.

The commission unveiled a vast reform of Europes woefully inadequate asylum system in September last year. EU member countries have endorsed parts of the package but they are unable to resolve the issues at the heart of their standoff.

Migrant arrivals dropped to a relative trickle after the EU sealed a deal in 2015 to convince Turkey to stop people from leaving its shores for the Greek islands, and member countries are trying to replicate that model in northern Africa.

Despite the significant drop in unauthorized migrant entries, the leaders said, developments on some routes give rise to serious concern and require continued vigilance and urgent action.

The EUs border and coast guard agency, Frontex, said Tuesday that 47,100 illegal border crossings were made into Europe in the first five months of this year, an increase of 47% for the same period last year, when arrival numbers were significantly down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Frontex said that many of the people crossing the central Mediterranean were Tunisians or from Bangladesh. Algerians and Moroccans made up the bulk of people arriving via the western Mediterranean route.

Raphael Shilhav, a migration expert at the charity group Oxfam, said the leaders should have used their summit to discuss creating fair and efficient asylum processes, improve the shameful conditions in EU reception centers and end the violent pushbacks the illegal expulsion of migrants from a country before they can seek asylum there.

EU leaders must not turn the issue of human rights into political bickering and must instead focus on helping people seek safety, he said.

Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

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EU pushes on with migrant policy outsourcing plans - The Republic

Nowhere to turn: The conflict has left millions of refugees scattered in crowded camps like this one in Idlib, Syria. (Maher Al Mounes / AFP via Getty Images)

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Bombing, bombing, bombingthats how Ahmad Yassin Leila recently described the whirlwind of destruction that met him and his young family as they sought shelter in Idlib, Syria, early last year. Leila, his wife, and their four children had come to Idlib after the Syrian governments heavy artillery siege of their Damascus neighborhood of East Ghouta had forced them from their home years before. Since then, they had been on the run from the pervasive violenceshock waves, caved-in ceilings, flying shrapnelthat seemed to follow wherever they fled.1

The Syrian government had been bombarding Idlib for months with tanks and armored vehicles, while Russian and Syrian war planes dropped incendiary explosives, cluster munitions, and massive barrel bombs on a population that included over a million people who had fled from other parts of Syria and taken refuge in the province. The bombs targeted schools and hospitals in neighborhoods thought to be rebel strongholds, neighborhoods now reduced to rubble, blood, ash, and the streams of people attempting to get out.2

In early 2020, Leila and his family piled onto a motorcycle and joined the hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives and dying on the cold mud road packed with trucks, cars, handcarts, motorcycles, bicycles, and animalsa limping exodus heading north toward Turkey in search of safety. But the hundreds of thousands of refugees were brought up short at the border wall. Turkey wouldnt let them in.3

Leilas family was left without shelter in the miserable cold of a northwestern Syrian winter, blocked by Turkeys border to the north and bombing, bombing, bombing to the south. The temperature frequently dropped below freezing at night, so people took to burning whatever they could find for warmth. One night that freezing February, in their floorless tent, Leila noticed that something was wrong with his 18-month-old daughter, Iman. Around 3 oclock in the morning, I tried to move my little girl, the child, he told me. But she was really blue and not moving, and then her body became hot, and we did not know what to do.4Related Article

The baby became unresponsive and cold again. Alarmed, Leila took her in his arms and, along with his wife, started looking for an ambulance or car that could transport her to a hospital. Finding no vehicle to help, they set out on foot. On the way, as Leila carried her close to his chest, Iman froze to death.5

When I first read of Iman Leilas tragically foreshortened life and terrible death in The New York Times last year, it captured something for me about the protracted conflicts human cost. Trying to understand what happens to someone who is fleeing persecution and is denied refuge has driven much of my reporting over the last few years. With the forcibly displaced, the desperate, and the undocumented, horror often piles upon horror. Ahmad Yassin Leila lost his daughter, and his name appeared in a newspaper, but then what? He was still living in a tent in the dead of winter, jets were still cutting across the sky on bombing missions, and border guards were still shooting at migrants trying to get beyond the wall.6

This February, a year after Leilas daughter died in his arms, I reached out to him via WhatsApp to learn more about what happened that night and what his family has endured since. His profile picture was a photo of Iman. In the picture, she is propped up on blankets and a pillow, wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt with a pink, apple-cheeked cartoon animal. Leila and his wife and their three surviving children, ages 5, 9, and 11, had just relocated to Afrin, a city in northern Syria less than 20 miles from the Turkish border. Through an interpreter, he told me about that time last year when he was trying to find a safe haven for his family. We kept searching and looking for a home, he said, but could not find one.7Current Issue

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Iman Leilas death and the hole it has left in her family was not caused by bullets or bombs or shrapnelnot directly, at least. Instead, her death and many others like it are due to the humanitarian crises that have followed in the conflicts wake, crises that are now crashing against the borders of other countries in the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. With the war in Syria entering its 10th year this spring, the full humanitarian impact remains impossible to catalog. The failure to address this young centurys greatest refugee crisis led to Iman Leilas unnecessary deathand the unfathomably violent Syrian conflict contains a multitude of stories like hers. What has a full decade of conflict done to the Syrians who have been forced from their homes, lost family members, and undergone hardships unimaginable to those who have lived without war?8

Even as President Bashar al-Assads blood-soaked victory in the conflict seems ever more assured, Syriansboth those in the country and those consigned to refugee camps or to a precarious undocumented status throughout the region and the worldare trapped in a cycle of violent upheaval and refuge denied. Moreover, the bending of international norms that the Syrian conflict has occasionedthe return of chemical weapons to the battlefield, the disregard for civilian casualties exhibited by regional and world powers, and the abrogation of refugee and asylum lawswill shape conflicts across the planet for years to come. It is time for the humanitarian costsboth in terms of lives lost and obligations ignoredto be tallied.9

Lasting destruction: Forty percent of Syrias infrastructure has been destroyed, including 50 percent of Idlibs health care infrastructure. (Louai Beshara / AFP via Getty Images)

While the human toll of the war in Syria is difficult to comprehend, some numbers do help put the situation into context. Since Assads troops fired the first shots at peaceful protesters in the southern city of Daraa in the spring of 2011, around 6.6 million people have been displaced within Syria. A similar number have been forced to flee the country. The number of dead may be as high as 600,000. Nobody really knows how many people are languishing in the Syrian governments secret prisons, but some observers estimate that hundreds of thousands may have been detained or disappeared in these human slaughterhouses. Forty percent of the countrys infrastructure has been destroyed. And people have been doubly, triply, multitudinously displaced, entire cities razed, neighborhoods engulfed in flames and flattened to rubble.10

Back in 2015, the world was momentarily aghast when pictures of the body of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old boy who drowned in the Mediterranean and then washed up on a Turkish shore, went viral. The images of Kurdi, who was from Kobani, Syria, and died with his mother and brother while trying to make the perilous journey from Turkey to a Greek island, forced the world to confront the reality of the humanitarian crisis. Politicians in the West were briefly held to account for refugee policies that had failed to respond adequately to the crisis: According to reports, Kurdis family had been seeking, ultimately, to reach Canada, and the childs death became a major issue in that countrys national elections.11

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But last year, when another young Syrian boy drownedthis time in the Aegeanhalf a decade after Kurdis death, the world hardly noticed, as journalist Robert Mackey pointed out at the time. Was Iman Leila another example of the Syrian War surpassing the limits of the worlds attention, or of a tragedy that exceeds our capacity for empathy?12

The reality, for desperately fleeing Syrians, is that things have only gotten worse since Kurdis death, and the vast majority of people displaced by the conflict have not been taken in by Western countries, in part because of nativist fearmongering in Western Europe and the United States. The US took in just over 18,000 Syrian refugees during the Obama administration. The Trump administration slashed those numbers significantly, resettling just 62 Syrians in 2018, before suspending all refugee applications last spring in response to the Covid pandemiclikely a violation of international law. (Even when the US was accepting significantly more refugeesnearly 85,000 from dozens of different countries in 2016that was only 0.4 percent of the worldwide total.)13

After a concerted campaign in 2015 to welcome Syrian refugees, largely in response to Kurdis drowning, Canada took in just under 45,000 from 2015 to 2020. Of the Western European countries, Germany has taken in the most refugees, at over 600,000; the Netherlands has accepted over 100,000; and a number of Eastern European countries have striven to take in none. The UK has accepted fewer than 20,000 Syrian refugees, though supposed tides of asylum seekers have contributed to a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric there, both in the run-up to the Brexit vote and afterward. Denmark is poised to become the first European country to begin deporting refugees back to Syria after deciding to reevaluate the cases of people who had fled Damascusa city that Denmark now deems to be safe, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including a number of African nations, have sparked the rise of far-right groups in other European countries and continue to provoke a potent backlash in the United States.14

Unequal burden: Refugees arrive in Germany in 2015. Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon have taken in millions, Western countries far fewer. (Sean Gallup / Getty Images)

All of which means that nearly all of the Syrians displaced by the war have been forced to remain in the region. There are over 1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, making up around a quarter of the countrys population. In Jordan, with a population of about 10 million, there are 1.3 million Syrian refugees, and in Turkey, there are more than 3.5 million. The destabilizing effects on these countries of this influx of traumatized and impoverished refugees cannot be overstated, even while the real victims remain the Syrians.15

In Lebanon, Syrian refugees face a host of restrictions, including arbitrary raids, curfews, and checkpoints that apply only to them. More than 80 percent dont have legal residency, and 90 percent live in extreme poverty and are vulnerable to arrest, harassment, and detention. In Jordan, in one of the largest refugee camps in the world, called Zaatari, more than 76,000 people suffer from acute health problems. And last year, 10,000 refugees were stranded, with little access even to essential resources, in a makeshift encampment at the Jordan-Syria border. Syrians in Turkey face precarity, unemployment, detention, and xenophobic attacks. And even as Europe closes its borders and uses the refugees as pawns in its negotiations with Turkey, Turkish border guards have brutally beaten, illegally deported, or killed Syrians breaching the border wall. Yet this hasnt stopped thousands of Syriansfacing bombs, torture, or starvation at homefrom trying to escape.16

Ahmad Kdor, a Syrian originally from Marat al-Numan, in the northwestern part of the country, has been forced to uproot himself multiple times. This spring, he described his experiences after being arrested at a checkpoint outside Damascus and taken to a secret prison, one of the many regime-run black sites that are places of almost unimaginable suffering. I tasted the most severe forms of torture, he told me.17

Kdor now lives in Idlib province, sometimes earning as little as a dollar a day as a laborer. When he can, he helps distribute food aid from a foreign NGO. He and his family rent a small home but are on the verge of moving into a nearby tent city, as Kdor cant afford both to feed his family and to pay rent. He described the desperation surrounding them: Some people hanged themselves, while others burned themselves because of the psychological stress and their inability to take care of their families and children. They could not do anything about it except to take their own lives. He added that around 90 percent of people living in tents [in Idlib] are dependent on humanitarian assistance. This humanitarian assistance is not enough, but it is better than death.18

Though Assad has wrested back effective control over about two-thirds of the country, the current economic collapse in Syria is adding even more misery to the crisis. Ongoing international sanctions, an all-time low for the Syrian lira, and a banking collapse in neighboring Lebanon have squeezed Syrias finances. In the past year, as the economy has continued to tank, food prices in the country have gone up 247 percent. According to the World Food Program, 12.4 million people in Syria, or about 70 percent of the population, are food-insecure, and 1.3 million are severely so, which means they sometimes go a day or more without food.19

Joshua Landis, a professor of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma and a fellow at the Quincy Institute, told me, For the Syrian people, who have suffered so much over the last 10 years, the suffering has only become more severe over the last year. For most, the direct violence and fighting are over, but economic conditions have collapsed at a faster pace over the last year than at any time during the worst war years.20

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Kdor described his daily routine now: I wake up in the morning and watch the news, see where the planes bombed and who died. Every day we fear that the regime will advance to our areas, and there are no remaining areas to which we can flee. We fear that the regime will come and kill us and our children.21

Besides the ongoing human toll, the conflict has also set dangerous precedents through the evisceration of international human rights law. The Syrian government, as well as the United States, Russia, Turkey, and others, have simply not been held to account for their numerous and egregious violations of such laws. Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch, cited the Chemical Weapons Convention, which had been one of the most robust and stringently followed international war covenants. But the Syrian governmentwhich acceded to the conventionhas staged multiple chemical attacks and never been held accountable. We have a morbid joke, Kayyali told me, that in the Syrian context, we used some words too early [back in 2012 and 13] and then the situation kept getting worse and worsefor example, whats beyond crimes against humanity? At some point, language reaches its limits.22

In 2017, during a US-led coalition campaign to liberate Raqqa, which had been suffering under ISISs heel for three years, US Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend said that the goal was zero human casualties, adding: I challenge anyone to find a more precise air campaign in the history of warfare. The reality, however, was that thousands of civilians were injured or killed by the US-led strikes. The American munitions came raining down amid a Russian bombing campaign that had been going on for at least two years. The Russian strikes, too, though allegedly targeting ISIS, hit and killed Syrian civilians. In other words, the accounting is being exacted on the people of Syria, not on the regime.23

I asked Nadia Hardman, a refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, what she views, after 10 years of war, as the hardest challenge Syrian refugees currently face. The knowledge that so many cant go back, she replied. Theyre living in eternal limbo. Theyre living in a country that doesnt want them. To be where they know theyre not wanted, and they cant go back. Theres not much hope.24

Hardman told me about Syrians leaving Jordan to return to Daraa, the city near the Jordanian border where the uprising started. Their homecoming, however, has not been what theyd expected. Young men of fighting age have to go through a reconciliation process in which they vow not to take up arms against the government. They run the risk of being forcibly conscripted into the Syrian Army or picked up by the military security agency.25 MORE FROM John Washington

In the areas under government controlwhere peace has ostensibly been restoredhomes have been destroyed, food is scarce, people can get bread only every few days or once a week, fuel is difficult to obtain, electricity lasts for just a couple of hours a day, and there are reports of extrajudicial killings and disappearances. Challenging doesnt cover it, Hardman said of the security and economic situation. The conditions are exhausting. Life is extremely difficult.26

In 2021, Human Rights Watch estimated that 50 percent of the health care infrastructure in Idlib province had been destroyed. Much of the rest of the country is dealing with the same or worse levels of destruction. Formerly rare or containable diseases, such as measles, hepatitis, and typhoid, have proliferated. And then the pandemic hit.27

While the fighting has waned in some parts of the country over the last year, an extremely dangerous daily reality has made it difficult to judge the severity of Covid-19s toll in Syria. However many Covid-related infections and deaths there are, the quarantines and curfews have certainly weighed down an already sinking economy. Last summer, the situation reached such a desperate point that, in Damascus and other government-held areas, people took to the streets again in protestthis time knowing full well the lengths to which their government would go to quell dissent.28

Stranded: Syrian refugees at the al-Fares camp in Lebanons Bekaa valley. More than a million Syrians are now in Lebanon, making up around a quarter of the countrys population (Marwan Naamani/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

They wanted their rights, they wanted an end to the corruption, they wanted bread and dignity, Kayyali told me, describing the initial impetus for the protests back in March of 2011. Despite the 10 years of brutal war, I dont know many Syrians who have given up on those initial demands. There have been numerous attempts to bring peace official talks in Geneva, cease-fires promised and announced and abandonedand still the war drags on into its second decade, with US, Russian, Turkish, and other forces remaining on the ground there.29

And now we are here, in Syria, Ahmad Yassin Leila told me a year after his baby daughter froze to death in his arms. He and his family have lived through yet another winter in a tent, this time in Afrin. Despite being legally considered Syrian soil, Afrin has been occupied by Turkish forces, as has the surrounding region of northwestern Syria, also known as Rojava, since the Trump administration green-lit the incursion in 2019. Though they live under Turkish control, Leila and his family cannot cross into Turkey. But they are done running for now.30

We are not thinking about leaving, Leila told me, because we are tired of moving around, and we are waiting for God to make things better for us, and we do not want anything else. We want to teach the children and have them go to school. We want this situation to end, and we do not want anything else.31

Read more:
The Human Cost of 10 Years of Conflict in Syria - The Nation

When President Joe Biden took office in January, there was an expectation that changes to policies on the southern border would help reverse the crisis there.

But what resulted was a surge in arriving migrants, some believing that Biden's friendlier approach toward immigration compared to his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, would make the end result of the arduous process easier.

In addition, hopes of reuniting families of children separated by Trump's controversial separation policy have also been slow-going and the issue of immigration generally has been a source of contention for the new administration.

Illustrating the turmoil is a dramatic surge in unauthorized U.S. southern border crossings. There were 180,000 just last month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- a two-decade high and a 76% increase since February.

During the Trump administration encounters with migrants were lower with monthly totals peaking at nearly 150,000, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, overwhelming immigration authorities and leading to overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities. The Biden administration has handled the elevated volume through combination of efforts including the transformation of ICE detention facilities into rapid processing centers and the expansion of migrant child care facilities.

Changing demographics of migrants and recidivism

Biden administration officials have underscored the elevated rate of repeat offenders as well as the shifting demographics of those coming across.

The number of single adults increased from April to May by about 10,000 while the number of families and children declined, according to CBP data. Adults are often easier to repatriate while children pose additional challenges of care, education, housing accommodations and health care needs.

Recidivism was also up with 38% of those arrested or detained in May having tried to cross at least one time before in the past year. That's up from an average one-year recidivism rate of 15% between 2014 and 2019.

A majority of those who made illegal crossings were sent back immediately or "expelled" under the controversial "Title 42" process. The order, critics say, drastically cuts access to humanitarian programs for asylum seekers and incentivizes families to send their children across the border alone as it facilitates the return of migrants, including families, to Mexico in a matter of hours. Children have been exempt from the rapid removal protocols since a November court ruling last year forced the Trump administration to stop sending them back.

A group of migrants mainly from Honduras and Nicaragua wait along a road after turning themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, in La Joya, Texas, May 17, 2021.

"The large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a larger-than-usual number of non-citizens making multiple border crossing attempts, and means total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border," CBP said in a recent statement.

Some success but challenges remain

As a result of the Biden administration's efforts to reunite children in U.S. custody with families and sponsors, the number of minors in Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement care has dropped from about 23,000 to about 16,000 in recent months.

The numbers remain at record levels compared to previous years, but the administration has opened a series of emergency sites to handle the intake and processing and give children a safe, clean place to stay before they are matched with sponsors.

Not all facilities have met government standards, however. One center in Houston was shuttered for failing to comply with federal guidelines. Sources familiar with the facility's operation said the girls housed there, aged 13-17, were at times instructed to use plastic bags for toilets because there were not enough staff members to accompany them to restrooms.

Until its closure, the Houston facility had been run by a local nonprofit with no prior experience housing unaccompanied migrant children.

A pair of migrant families from Brazil pass through a gap in the border wall after crossing from Mexico into Yuma, Ariz., June 10, 2021, to seek asylum. The families are part of an influx of asylum-seekers entering the U.S. in the Yuma area from South America and other continents.

So far, the HHS facilities designed to alleviate crowding in Border Patrol stations have not been met with the pushback that accompanied them under the Trump administration. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., referred to some government facilities as "racist child prisons" when the prior administration moved to house children at an Army based once used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans in World War II.

Changes and clearing the backlog

One of the principal issues is a major backlog in processing deportation cases, including for those who may be eligible for asylum. According to researchers at Syracuse University there are more than 1.3 million pending cases as of May 2021, a number which has steadily grown since the late '90s.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under the Biden administration updated expedited criteria policy allowing individuals with urgent humanitarian needs to move through the system faster.

U.S. Border Patrol agents observe the body of a person covered in a white sheet near the border wall in El Paso, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, June 11, 2021.

The agency also reinstated its policy of allowing immigrant applicants, including those seeking asylum, to be notified of disqualifying elements in their applications and make corrections.

This is a reversal of a Trump-era policy that allowed for immediate cancellation of applications with errors without notice. Green card applicants can now get a work permit for two years instead of one before needing to reapply.

USCIS is also working to build operating capacity with fewer COVID-19-related restrictions.

High-traffic application support centers, where people go to get fingerprinted, are open for extended 12-hour periods after many were shuttered during the pandemic. USCIS is also allowing applicants to skip re-submitting biometric data if that information is already in the system. The measures have led to a 33% reduction in the wait queue for applications, according to one Biden administration official.

'Do not come'

Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the border as part of her portfolio, recently announced during a trip to Guatemala and Mexico task force groups for smuggling, trafficking and corruption, assistance for housing and entrepreneurs and a $40 million young women's empowerment initiative.

Yet benchmarks, timelines and exact goals of the programs remain vague and apparently long-term. Harris also took the opportunity to issue an urgent-sounding message to those planning migration.

Vice President Kamala Harris, left, looks toward Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, during a news conference on June 7, 2021, at the National Palace in Guatemala City.

"I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border. There are legal methods by which migration can and should occur, but we, as one of our priorities, will discourage illegal migration. And I believe, if you come to our border, you will be turned back."

The vice president's comments were widely criticized as insensitive to real asylum claims, which migrants have legal rights to initiate upon arrival in the U.S. even if the means of arrival are unlawful.

In a gaggle with reporters on the tarmac in Guatemala City earlier this month, Harris defended her message to migrants.

"I'm really clear we have to deal with the root cause," she said. "And that is my focus. Period."

ABC News' Ben Gittleson and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

Read the original post:
Crisis at the border: How it happened and what is being done - ABC News

As Amy Boyden clambered over a mountain of orange foam lifejackets on the Greek island of Lesbos, the nauseating scale of the humanitarian crisis knocking on Europes door hit her hard.

It felt like I was at a funeral," she said. "There were thousands and thousands and thousands of lifejackets."

You can walk over them. It felt like walking across the ocean and across dead bodies. The air was so still and there was such a sense of hopelessness. Its so sad that these people had to go through this.

A graveyard of lifejackets

Ms Boyden, a recent UCC Law graduate, visited 'Lifejacket Graveyard', a place where washed-up lifejackets or those left on the beaches by people who make it to shore are gathered after she arrived on the Greek island as an international humanitarian aid worker this year to help with the unending refugee crisis.

She noticed a little girls shoes among the mountains of black and orange foam.

What happened to that four-year-old girl who wore those shoes? Did she survive?

"Its so distressing to think of my own niece in that situation, Ms Boyden said.

But despite their overwhelming mass, the volume of jackets at Lifejacket Graveyard barely hints at the scale of the refugee crisis.

Internationally, some 82.4m people are forcibly displaced worldwide according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

And although headlines now rarely scream about people drowning in the Mediterranean, 815 people have died trying to make that crossing already this year, according to estimates by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Missing Migrants project.

And Greece, a country that saw more than a million people arrive on its shores during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, is now hardening its stance on new arrivals.

The Mediterranean country says it has little choice due to the lack of support from the rest of Europe.

Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi recently told Reuters that the government is taking a tougher approach so we dont send the wrong message of incentivising people to come to Greece.

Many of those who arrive in Greece do so through Lesbos, which is only separated from Turkey by a narrow strait.

People ferried like livestock

From Turkey, people are stuffed onto little boats like livestock and are often sold fake lifejackets, death traps painted brightly to pose as something good.

The horrifying subject of defective lifejackets was raised in the European Parliament as far back as 2016, when they were viewed as clearly to blame for many deaths at sea.

These people are just like you and me, they have skills and dreams and aspirations.

"Its horrifying how theyve been treated," Ms Boyden said.

Inspired by her godmother, who still volunteers in her 60s, Ms Boyden eventually made the trip to Greece in March, two months after she planned to leave following five Covid-cancelled flights.

Ms Boyden has been teaching English at the Kara Tepe or New Moria refugee camp which was hastily located on an abandoned army firing range after a fire ripped through the infamous Moria refugee camp last September.

Moria, Europes largest refugee camp, was originally designed to hold 3,000 people but 13,000 subsisted there when the fire hit in the middle of a Covid outbreak.

Armageddon-like images from that fire and its aftermath show dazed children clutching what little possessions they could save as they shuffle beneath looming charred security fences ensnared in sharp, blackened barbed wire.

Human Rights Watch raised serious concerns that the new site where Ms Boyden works has significant lead poisoning from its days as a firing range.

Some 6,000 souls in the camp

However, Ms Boyden said that the facilities are at least an improvement on Moria, and the camp is not as overcrowded.

It is estimated that some 6,000 people live at the new, temporary camp including more than 2,000 minors.

A strict lockdown was imposed on the camp to contain the spread of Covid-19, further limiting the already restricted lives of its inhabitants.

She said life at the camp is not easy for those seeking asylum:

The shelter is completely inadequate. There are two, three families living in one tent with no windows. The temperatures are rising, well be seeing 30 degrees heat with little to no shading or shelter. Its unbearable to stay inside the tents.

There is running water, toilets, showers but people sometimes have to walk quite a bit to get to them.

Its pretty tough. The mental health situation in the camp is catastrophic. Theres a lack of resources for supporting people trapped in this situation, theyre overstretched.

Some people say to me that every day is the same. All their hope is drained. Theres a lot of waiting and isolation.

Everyone wears masks in camp, she said, and an NGO provides hand sanitation. There are rapid antigen and PCR tests and if someone tests positive they go into a quarantine area for two weeks. However, serious cases of Covid in the camp have been very rare, she said, as most people are still quite young.

Refugees fleeing horrific situations

Ms Boyden teaches adults. Her youngest pupil is 18 and her oldest is 46.

Im teaching them how to read and write its very rewarding," she says. "They try so hard. They just need to believe in themselves more.

Learning a European language empowers them and will be valuable when navigating the asylum process, she said.

She said that many of her students have had to flee horrifying realities in their home countries.

A lot of them come from Afghanistan. To face the Taliban, to decide that youre going to leave with your family and walk across so many countries by foot. Its insane.

Then they have to go on that boat journey from Turkey to Greece which is also so treacherous:

Theyre so desperate, they feel they have no other option but to put their whole family in the boat and just hope to God that they wont drown, or be pushed back.

The Greek authorities have repeatedly denied that their coastguards have been pushing migrant boats back into Turkish waters.

However, Ms Boyden said that allegations about this horrible practice are rife.

She said that people are too quick to demand that people should now return to countries such as Afghanistan which are still violent and unstable.

'We'll never understand what they've lost'

It makes me so angry. A lot of people say, well if the country is safe refugees should go back to them'. But if they were willing to make that massive, dangerous journey, well never begin to understand what they have gone through and what theyve lost.

In Kabul, in Afghanistan, 40 schoolgirls were killed in a bombing. Or in Iran, an Iranian man was beheaded because of his sexual orientation. Or in Palestine, the Gaza Strip is being bombed by Israel.

If your daughter runs the risk of being blown up going to school, is this a safe place?

If your son runs the risk of being beheaded because of his sexual orientation, dont you think he has the right to leave and resettle? I think they have every right.

'Unspeakable crimes against human rights'

Unspeakable crimes against human rights are being committed every day.

All these men, women, and children travel thousands of miles in search of a safe haven. But they continuously face inhumane treatment and breaches of human rights law, even when they make it to Europes door.

Its devastating to see peoples hopes and dreams being drained in camps.

Its intense. Recently, there was a mother of three, she was pregnant with her fourth child and she put her three children outside the tent, she went back in and set herself on fire. She just could not do it any more.

"But she didnt die, and now shes being prosecuted for arson.

'Ireland could do more'

Ms Boyden believes that Ireland could do more to help these people, by ending direct provision and by taking in more refugees.

When the camp Moria burned down in September 2020, Ireland said it would take in four refugees four out of more than 12,000 people.

Since the 1800s, 10m Irish people have migrated to countries across the world. Ireland, I feel, could take in far more refugees. We have quite a low population, and so many countries took us in. I feel we should do something in return.

These people just want their children to go to school without the fear of them being blown up by extremists. They just want to live peaceful lives.

We have a tendency to turn a blind eye if its not affecting us. But if it was affecting you, God almighty, youd want somebody to be helping you.

She encouraged every adult to volunteer.

Its a hugely rewarding experience and anyone can do it. Its great to make life that bit better for people, to help them forget the nightmare theyve been living and to show them that there is hope.

Ms Boyden is fundraising for school materials and for hygiene products and clothes for fast-growing babies and children at the camp.

To donate to her campaign, visit exa.mn/AmyBoydenFundraiser.

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Refugee crisis: 'What happened to that four-year-old girl who wore those shoes?' - Irish Examiner

As Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is moving to allocate $250 million of state taxpayer money toward completing the southern border wall within his state, which began construction under President Trump but halted under President Biden, "The Five" discussed how governors are filling the absence of leadership at the federal level when it comes to the migrant crisis.

On Thursday, host Dana Perino pointed to Abbott's decision to use state money for what is supposed to be a federal responsibility as a result of inaction from Biden and Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

"I think it is very real," Perino replied when asked whether Abbott is acting in real support of his state, or in support of partisan politics. "Especially if you are in Texas and one big frustration has to be for the governor that they have this problem, the federal government is unwilling to helpbut immigration and border security is a federal government responsibility."

"That's why it's amazing that they say, we will take a billion dollars of state taxpayer money to try to deal with this problem,'" she said. Texas allocated $1 billion to border security with $250 million being a down payment for the border wall.

Perino added that she understands Abbott's frustration with the Biden administration.

"On the political side of things, because of the lack of action by the Biden administration, you are allowing these governors a chance to shine," she said, adding that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, R, is the other border state governor appearing to make decisions towards addressing the issue.

However, she noted, the other two border state governors, Govs. Michelle Lujan-Grisham of New Mexico and Gavin Newsom of Californiaboth Democratsare not being proactive in addressing border security.

Cohost Jesse Watters recalled Biden's predecessor who sought to help states with their crises rather than ignore them.

"I remember when we had a president that would help the states. He sent New York ventilators," Watters said, referring to former President Trump giving federal assistance to New York during the COVID-19 pandemic. "Now Biden is hanging Texas out to dry, so [Abbott] stepping up."

"But like Dana said, it is hard for a governor to build a border wall because most of that is federal land in the land that is not federal land, it is privately owned, all landowners adjacent to each other all have to agree to have a wall built," Watters noted.

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During a testy exchange in a congressional hearing on Thursday, Mayorkas bristled at Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who asked him about Vice President Harris' "laugh" about visiting the border, and whether that was a proper response.

"I consider that question to be quite unfair and disrespectful," Mayorkas replied.

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Dana Perino: Biden's inaction on immigration crisis, border wall allows 'governors a chance to shine' - Fox News