More than 6,000 migrants who entered the island of Lesvos illegally are trapped and tried to find ways to escape while waiting for their asylum applications to be processed.
Under the Turkey-European Union agreement effective as of March 20, those who have landed on the island illegally will be sent back to Turkey. If they are Syrian and qualify for asylum, they will be sent back to Turkey in exchange for an equal number of Syrians currently in Turkey who will be sent to where their families are in Europe.
Those who are not Syrian would have to be deported to their country of origin. All migrants, though, have the right to apply for asylum. Most of the migrants on Lesvos have applied for asylum, thus extending their time of stay in the hope that they would eventually cross the Greek border and leave for their destination of choice.
The registration centers of Lesvos that were designed to host for a few days only, have now turned to informal detention camps as applications for asylum take months to process, while new migrants arrive daily from the Turkish coast. As a result, there is tension that, in the case of Lesvos, culminated in the burning of a big part of the Moria hotspot and several injuries after a violent fight between Pakistani and Afghan nationals.
According to local website lesvosnews.gr, many migrants try to leave the island mostly hidden in trucks and vans traveling to Piraeus Port.
Authorities carry out checks on a daily basis, locating illegal migrants hiding in cargo trucks who, in some cases, even stay hidden for a whole week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0DLVpAyDyQ
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