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“Your job is to take in migrants and welcome them because they come out of love. And whether you like it or not, we’re an aging continent so you have to let them in,” Ylva Johansson, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs. Two years after his departure, Fabrice Leggeri opens up about his time at the EU border guard agency, Frontex. As the boss, he desperately wanted to protect European borders against illegal migrants strictly, but according to him, this was explicitly halted by the European Commission. Frontex, officially known as the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is an...

Irregular immigration to the EU from Western Africa rose more than ten times on the year in January, according to the bloc's Frontex border agency, which expects overall arrivals to grow in 2024 and says halting the movement of people completely is impossible. Frontex head Hans Leijtens spoke in his Warsaw office ahead of a trip by the EU chief executive and Spanish prime minister on Thursday to Mauritania, which has recently become a major point of departure for Europe. Asked about a June EU-wide parliamentary election, in which migration is a top issue, the former Dutch border guard told...

In an effort to stop migrants from crossing the Mediterranean, Austria's chancellor has said EU border patrol guards should be sent to northern Africa. Sebastian Kurz has made cracking down on immigration a priority.Frontex border control agents should be allowed to operate in northern Africa in order to prevent further migration to Europe, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said in an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag,published on Sunday. Kurz's comments appeared to foreshadow the Austrian government's plans for when it takes over the EU Presidency for six months starting in July. Read more: Follow the money: What are the...

A top European security official on Thursday expressed skepticism about President-elect Donald Trump’s idea of building a wall to prevent illegal migrants from coming to the United States from Mexico. Fabrice Leggeri, executive director of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, told reporters that building physical barriers does not solve the underlying problems that are causing migration: poverty and conflict. “This doesn’t address the root cause of this phenomenon,” Leggeri said, adding that some European Union member states have erected fences between them. Illegal migration has become a hot topic both in the United States and in Europe....

Turkey is under growing pressure to consider a major escalation in migrant deportations from Greece, a top European Union official said Thursday, amid preparations for a highly anticipated summit of EU and Turkish leaders next week. European Council President Donald Tusk ended a six-nation tour of migration crisis countries in Turkey, where 850,000 migrants and refugees left last year for Greek islands. [...] Tusk was careful to single out illegal economic migrants for possible deportation, not asylum-seekers. And he wasn't clear who would actually carry out the expulsions: Greece itself, EU border agency Frontex or even other organizations like NATO....

The European Union border protection agency Frontex says it will deploy forces along Greece’s border with neighboring Albania. Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri on Friday told Albanian television station Top Channel the agency wants to prevent migrants from attempting to reach Western Europe by traveling through Albania. That route isn’t used at the moment by the large number of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Tirana says, however, it has made preparations to shelter refugees should they begin arriving during the winter. Leggeri said there was no plan for a camp in Albania as “that...

The risk that groups like Islamic State could smuggle militants into Europe under cover of a huge wave of migrants is much smaller than some politicians suggest, according to security specialists with close ties to governments and intelligence agencies. By the end of July, more than a third of a million migrants and refugees had entered the European Union, mainly via Italy, Greece and Hungary, according to EU border agency Frontex. The flow has continued unabated through August. Once inside the bloc’s borderless Schengen zone, the new arrivals—many from countries like Syria and Iraq where Islamic State holds sway over...

Border agency in Warsaw struggles to find staff By Sarah Laitner in Brussels Published: January 20 2007 02:00 | Last updated: January 20 2007 02:00 A European Union border agency at the centre of efforts to curb illegal immigration to Europe is struggling to hire experts, with some foreigners unwilling to relocate to its Polish headquarters. Staff shortages at Warsaw-based Frontex could leave the agency unable to co-ordinate joint naval patrols on the EU's southern borders this spring, when thousands are expected to arrive by boat from northern Africa. Ilkka Laitinen, Frontex executive director, said: "Recruitment is a challenge for...