Police in northern Greece have arrested 11 people over the weekend, mostly foreign nationals, accused of driving carloads of newly arrived undocumented migrants into the country’s hinterland on behalf of smuggling gangs.
All the suspects were taken into custody in the northeastern Evros region, along which Greece’s land border with Turkey runs. Even though much of the frontier has been fortified with a high metal fence on the Greek side, thousands of people still manage to cross every year, hoping to find a better life in Europe.
Police said the suspects allegedly picked up a total of more than 40 migrants near the points where they had recently entered from Turkey and were driving them west. Most migrants try to head to Thessaloniki from the border, and from there seek ways of voyaging deeper into the continent’s prosperous heartland.
So far this year, about 5,000 of the roughly 22,000 undocumented migrants to have reached Greece entered through the Evros land border. The vast majority of the rest traveled by small boats provided by smugglers that cross the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa to Crete.
