After months of harsh criticism for not having lived up to her campaign promises—lately even from inside her own conservative coalition—Giorgia Meloni’s government this week outlined a plan for combating illegal migration.
According to the news website InfoMigrants, the prime minister and the Minister of Interior Matteo Piantedosi will present a new security package in September, designed to deal with unregistered migrants, particularly those deemed dangerous and problematic.
The government wants to increase the presence of police on city streets, issue harsher sentences for violent attacks against members of the police force, and give security forces more powers when dealing with unregistered migrants.
One of the main priorities, however, of the right-wing coalition government, is to speed up the deportation of migrants whose asylum has been denied, especially those who have committed a violent crime. The intention is to “have simplified procedures that will allow subjects with a significant criminal record or serious psychiatric conditions not to represent a danger in Italy,” said Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Interior Nicola Molteni.
Included in the simplified procedures is a plan to open more repatriation centers, preferably in the vicinity of airports, so that migrants whose applications for asylum have been denied can be flown out of the country quickly, rather than, as the case is currently, languishing in repatriation centers, sometimes for months.
Despite Meloni campaigning last year for tougher action against illegal migration, the number of illegal arrivals has surged under her government, compared to the same period the year prior.
Attacks committed with knives and machetes by migrants are becoming ever more common in Italy. Yet another brutal assault, committed by African migrants, took place on a regional train heading towards the northern city of Lecco this week , reports Il Giornale. Footage released by the police shows African men in their twenties attacking a boy with a machete, scarring his face and robbing him of his phone and wallet. The boy tried to hide in the train’s bathroom, but one of the migrants forced the door open with the machete.
The boy alerted the police and the train stopped at one of the stations to allow the officers to board and arrest the perpetrators. Initially, just two of the men, a 22 and a 25- year-old Central African citizen, were arrested and charged with robbery, aggravated assault and the illegal possession of a weapon. Days later their accomplices were also tracked down and taken into custody. The boy didn’t suffer any life-threatening injuries and was treated by medical personnel on the spot.
As The European Conservative previously reported, the attempted rape of a 61-year-old Italian woman by a homeless Nigerian migrant in the city of Rovereto was so vicious that the woman later died in hospital from her injuries.
