Amygdaleza opens by the end of the week

At the end of this week the first immigrant hospitality center will open in Amygdaleza. The immediate goal of the authorities is to collect as many illegal immigrants from the center of Athens as possible, deport them within 20-25 days and create a big wave of voluntary repatriation of illegal immigrants.

Today marks the start of the process for complaints about homes where dozens of illegal immigrants are hoarded together. "From Wednesday morning Police HQ will accept these complaints and there will be separation of those arrested. The sick will go to hospitals and the illegals will go to the Detention and Hosting centres for deportation. For those who are legal, there will be full disclosure and examination of their personal information, so as not to repeat this kind of phenomenon," Michael Chrysochoidis said.

Makis Voridis is against this

Work in the detention facilities is nearing completion, although Police officials say the whole center will be ready mid-May. Essentially this is an area in the Amygdaleza Police school with dozens of containers that hosted hundreds of police officers who worked inn the Olympic Games in 2004. Transport minister Makis Voridis disagreed on this issue yesterday. "The place where the immigrants are going to be moved has houses for earthquake victims under my personal responsibility. No one will enter any house in the containers for the earthquake victims."

Aiming at 1,200 people

The sweeping operations in the "problematic" areas (already carried out on a smaller scale) will begin once the Detention centre in Amygdaleza is completed. According to Michael Chrysohoides, the first center will be open by next week with 220 people and by May 15 they will reach 1,200. They will be guarded by police and private security companies.

The responsibility for their safety will be in the hands of the Hellenic Police, but that will happen on two levels. There will be a sufficient number of officers who will be guarding the detention center. Inside there will be unarmed employees of private security companies. There will also be new recruitments.

As assured by the minister of Citizen Protection, illegal migrants will remain in these centers only for a few weeks, 3-4 at most, and then will return home with a paid ticket, pocketing a little financial aid in the process.