Italy has given permission for 140 migrants to disembark the Spanish rescue ship Open Arms. Over the past two days more than 100 migrants jumped off the rescue ship stranded off Sicily and tried to swim to shore.
Police in Siracusa, Sicily, on September 11 carried out expulsion orders against 81 irregular migrants. The migrants were on board the quarantine ship Azzurra off the Sicilian port of Augusta.
Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said, regarding migrant arrivals on Italian shores, that the authorities “certainly can't stop the boats by sinking them," and said the strategy is to work with countries of origin to stop departures.
A young man from Eritrea was fatally hit by a car in southern Italy as he was running away from an asylum seeker residence. Three police officers were reportedly also injured. The Eritrean was part of a group of migrants who had attempted to flee the center following a protest against overcrowding and bad living conditions.
An Italian court has rejected a decree to close Sicily's migrant centers. The order had been made by the governor of Sicily, who said it was aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus.
The Italian government has vowed to block a move by the governor of Sicily to empty out the migrant hotspots and reception centers in the region. The centers were ordered to implement stringent anti-COVID measures by next Tuesday or they would be closed down.
Centro Astalli, the Jesuit service for refugees in Italy, said that regarding the controversy over migrant arrivals in Sicily, the real emergency "is the fact that people are dying in the Mediterranean and from causes that force them to flee their countries."
Sicily's regional governor Nello Musumeci published a decree on Sunday, August 23 calling for all migrant hotspots and welcome centers to be closed down from midnight on Monday, August 24 if they could not meet the adequate health conditions required to protect people against the transmission of COVID-19.
Amid growing tensions in Italy due to an increase in migrant arrivals, the Italian government has launched a new call for tenders to find a second ship to use for quarantining migrants arriving in the country. Meanwhile Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini has travelled to Libya to re-launch cooperation between the two countries.
The German NGO Sea-Eye is in the process of suing the Italian ministry of transport for blocking its search and rescue vessel Alan Kurdi in Sicily. The blockage has been preventing further necessary rescue missions in the Mediterranean, Sea-Eye said.
Mayors are sounding the alarm in southern Italy: reception centers for migrants are overcrowded, and there is growing resentment in the population. Other Mediterranean states also report rising numbers of arrivals.
The local administration in Cassibile, near Siracusa in Sicily, announced that it has evacuated the area that was hosting a shanty town for seasonal migrant workers.