Italy’s Salvini closes ‘largest migrant center in Europe’

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday closed a migrant center in Sicily that he said was the largest in Europe.

Salvini, underlining a decrease in migrant arrivals since he took over a year ago, told reporters in Mineo, Sicily, that that the number of migrants in such centers is down from 182,000 a year ago to 107,000 now.

The ministry’s figures show that 3,073 migrants arrived in Italy so far this year, compared with 17,000 in the same period last year and 85,000 a year earlier. Those figures include 47 migrants brought to shore in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo early Tuesday by Italy’s financial police agency, AP said.

Salvini has refused to allow humanitarian rescue ships into Italian ports, but some migrant boats continue to arrive in Italy by their own means.