What was once Europe’s largest asylum seeker and migrant reception center, the CARA Mineo, near Catania, in Sicily, was officially closed Tuesday. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hailed the move, saying police investigations had discovered the activity of what he called “mafias, not only Italian but also Nigerian,” based at the center.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said he kept the promise he had made: close the camp in Mineo, considered one of the largest in Europe. The remaining migrants have been moved to a center in Calabria and no one remains at the facility, which housed more than 4,100 people at its peak in July 2014.
Before being turned into a reception center, it was a housing complex for the U.S. military. Salvini said the complex, which resembles an American suburb, will be put to good use but no decision has yet been taken as to what it will become.
The anti-immigration interior minister, who traveled Tuesday morning to Mineo, hailed the closure.
"Some investigation has brought to light the evident activity of mafias, not only Italian but also Nigerian, which had expanded as a drug dealing operation in the whole local area. Now the CARA is closing and it is a beautiful morning," said Salvini.
FILE - Italian police patrol as migrants from the Mineo asylum center are transferred to smaller structures after legislation passed by Italy's new government calls for its closure, near Catania in Sicily, Feb. 7, 2019.
The interior minister also said the closure of the center was positive news for the local population and the entire territory, which now would no longer have to fear criminal acts by the migrants. On the same day, Salvini inaugurated a new police station in the nearby town of Caltagirone.
The Italian government had already steadily reduced the number of people at the Mineo center. When Salvini’s League party and the populist 5-Star Movement government took office in March 2018, the number of occupants stood at slightly more than 2,500.
Since taking office, Salvini has issued two decrees on migrants and security, the second most recently. He has declared war on charity rescue vessels and is operating a “closed ports” policy in Italy. But hundreds of desperate migrants continue to arrive from Libya on Italian shores by their own means.
Organizations that provide assistance to migrants have accused the interior minister of stripping migrants of basic rights, marginalizing them and exposing them to criminality.