Greece May Have Deported Some People 'By Mistake — UN Refugee Agency

But that could take many months or longer. Greek police officers were breathing down our necks, threatening to arrest us unless we left. Turkey is not allowing us.

"We're animals now", Asma shouted after us. However, the first boatloads of migrants deported from Greece arrived in Turkey two days ago.

The deal was agreed on March 18 in a summit between Turkish and European leaders to regulate migration flow from conflict and poverty areas to Europe via Turkey.

Authorities in Greece have paused deportations to Turkey and acknowledged that most migrants and refugees detained on Greek islands have applied for asylum. The first returns took place Monday at dawn. Until now only hundreds have arrived in France compared to thousands in neighbouring Germany.

"The migrant camp on Lesbos is basically a prison".

Under the pact, Ankara will take back migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to enter Greece illegally, including Syrians.

European officials say it is essential for Turkey to adopt tighter regulation on temporary protection for Syrians, according to people familiar with an internal European Commission report.

Under last month's deal, for every Syrian refugee returned, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to the European Union, with numbers capped at 72,000. Greece on Monday expelled 202 migrants under the deal. The deal's byzantine complexities have sowed confusion, fear and anxiety among asylum-seekers and authorities alike.

The delays have been pinned on a range of factors, from governments trying to filter out militants from among the refugees following the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris, to a lack of housing and education - but, say sceptics, political foot-dragging has also played a part.

Turkish Foreign Ministry's Deputy Undersecretary Ayse Sinirlioglu has recently told lawmakers in Parliament that Turkey has readmission agreements with 14 countries so far and submitted a draft deal to 14 new countries with a hope of signing the deal soon. But human-rights groups take the opposite stance. Two groups of mainly Pakistani men, totalling around 100 people, were also intercepted by the Turkish coastguard near Dikili, an official said.

"We risk our lives to come here, we don't want to go back to Turkey because they are going to send us back to Pakistan".

I talk to a few refugees from different countries - including Syria, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For Greece's part, the deal demands enormous logistical efforts by a country hobbled by six years of financial crisis. With 50,000 refugees in Greece, since the Greece-Macedonia border was closed, and 30 camps across Greece, it is unclear when and how the over-stretched Greek asylum service will deal with requests under the EU's relocation scheme.

Of the 640 who have been registered, most expressed a wish to apply for asylum. "Will they be safe once returned to Turkey?" Criteria for just what "unsafe" means have yet to be determined.

The Greek Orthodox Church earlier said it had approved plans for a papal visit to Lesbos island after Francis expressed a desire to "shed light on the major humanitarian problem" of the migrant influx. ― Reuters picThe whole process could drag on indefinitely.

Lesbos has been named by the Orthodox church as the destination for the church leaders, and Joanna Kakissis, reporting for NPR from Athens, says it's a logical destination: it's where hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees arrived a year ago, and where many of those now facing deportation are located. The human carousel continues.

"The conditions forcing these people to move, including onwards to Europe, are still present and many people are falling through the cracks", said Boris Cheshirkov, a UNHCR spokesman on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Source: Greece May Have Deported Some People 'By Mistake — UN Refugee Agency