Turkey to readmit 200 migrants from Greece Wednesday, official says

According to Turkish authorities, Syrians would be given the option to register for asylum, while refugees from other nations would be sent back home. Turkey insists it is meeting its worldwide obligations.

The boats left the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, then headed across the Aegean Sea, the same path many migrants risked death to cross.

"All of the migrants returned are from Pakistan except for two migrants from Syria who returned voluntarily", Giorgos Kyritsis, a spokesman for a government refugee crisis committee, told state TV.

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.

Only 30 of 400 migration officers from other European Union countries have arrived in Greece so far, Stavropoulou said, while additional locally hired staff would take "several months" to train and integrate into the Asylum Service, Stavropoulou said. The European plan to send migrants from Greece back to Turkey is set to be implemented starting today.

Hundreds of asylum seekers have been deported from Greece overnight, sent back to Turkey as part of a deal that aims to ease mass migration to Europe.

A young refugee girl is carried ashore by a volunteer shortly after arriving with her family from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015.

WOMAN: These are individuals who are fleeing horrific scenes of war and the kind of abuses we know from Aleppo, for example, and we are playing some type of ping-pong with them.

Greece's refugee camps have now become detention centers.

"It is completely disingenuous to say that the EU-Turkey deal is about saving lives", Sunderland added.

Two Syrians who asked to go back to Turkey were aboard the first three boats carrying deportees.

The migrant exchange plan has been called controversial: the borders to the Balkans have been closed, and no refugees are entering Germany through Hungary.

Syrian refugees arrive at the camp for refugees and migrants in Friedland, Germany on April 4, 2016.

Migrants are still arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos - despite an European Union deal to deport them back to Turkey if they fail to gain asylum.

- It has been described as a one-for-one operation: for every Syrian among the returnees to Turkey, one Syrian refugee already in Turkey would be resettled in Europe.

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Source: Turkey to readmit 200 migrants from Greece Wednesday, official says