Deported migrants are sent to holding centre in Turkey

More than 1 million people made "irregular arrivals" inside Europe's borders in 2015 alone, many of them displaced by the Syrian civil war.

The agreement between the European Union and Turkey was reached last month at a summit in Brussels.

However, after the gradual border closures along the Balkan route in February, more than 50,000 were trapped in Greece.

On Monday morning, while the first boats from Greece landed in Turkey, 32 Syrians were sent to Germany and 11 to Finland.

More than 130 refugees, mostly from Pakistan and Bangladesh, were deported at dawn from the remote Greek island of Lesbos to Dikili, a small port town in Turkey.

Two tents have been erected in Dikili to register the first group from Lesbos, with similar facilities further south to receive migrants sent from Chios.

While the actual process went off relatively calmly, we saw at the port of Mytilene a few small-scale protests by activists angry at the deportations. Kakissis said that when talking to refugees, they tell relatives in their home countries not to come. That sentiment was in sharp contrast to protests over the weekend by residents who feared that Dikili would turn into a warehouse for refugees.

The people that I spoke to there were mainly from Afghanistan, Iran, some Pakistanis - they said that conditions in the camps were pretty bad.

More than 56-hundred migrants have been registered on Greece's Eastern Islands since that date.

Meanwhile, 16 Syrian refugees from Turkey arrived in the German city of Hannover earlier today for resettlement, with 16 more expected later on Monday.

However, in the ferries to Turkey there were only two deported Syrians, who had not asked for asylum while being in Greece, the authorities said.

Yet even as the Turkish officials carried out a series of raids to crack down on smugglers, some migrants have been undeterred by - or unaware of - the new regulations.

The U.N. refugee agency says returns of people to Turkey under a deal with the European Union to manage the flow of refugees and migrants are so far "normal policy", but that the agency will be watching its implementation.

The deal, though, has been heavily criticised by aid organisations and the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, which claim that collective deportations such as this are illegal and that Turkey is not a safe destination to return refugees.

 The EU said none of those returned on Monday had requested asylum in Greece and that they had left voluntarily.

At the same time, "human rights groups are concerned that migrants have not been properly informed about their options for asylum", Joanna says.

"The returns this morning in the Aegean are the symbolic start of the potentially disastrous undoing of Europe's commitment to protecting refugees", said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe and Central Asia, who is witnessing deportations.

Two Syrians were also reported to be on the ships.

Source: Deported migrants are sent to holding centre in Turkey