The post Exclusive — Inside Greece’s Migrant Control Operation Center: Migration Minister Reveals How Trump Win Sparked Worldwide Border Crackdown appeared first on Breitbart.
—
ATHENS, Greece — Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris sat with Breitbart News exclusively for a lengthy interview last week explaining how the Hellenic Republic controls the flow of migration into this country, and how President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory in the United States set off a global movement that has led to stricter migration policies worldwide.
“For me, the best thing that President Trump did is the change of the migration policy in the USA and also of Europe,” Plevris told Breitbart News. “We can discuss about President Trump for one or two hours. As you know, I am a fan of President Trump. But if you ask me what was the best thing he did it was change the migration policy of the USA, because now we have a new migration policy also in Europe. We had a bad policy in Europe, and that was because of the USA—not because of Europe—this is the truth. I saw the polls. Germany, France, Holland, Denmark changed their policy because of the polls. In Sweden, they had the left policy—and now they have a stricter policy. And I see something now in Greece, as I told you, we have a very strict policy—and I see the polls: 30 percent are against our policy because they think it’s a policy against human rights, 35 percent agree with the policy, and 35 percent want stricter policy.”
This swing in public sentiment for stronger migration controls across Europe is something Plevris directly attributes to Trump’s success in the United States. He argues that when now former President Joe Biden was in office, the Biden administration’s open borders policies encouraged more countries especially those here in Europe to have open borders as well. But when Trump came back and implemented popular restrictions, the Europeans wanted those too—and so it has happened continent-wide with rare exception due to public demand.
“That means that the message from our citizens is clear: Enough is enough,” Plevris told Breitbart News.
It’s Trump’s return, he said, that set off a firestorm across Europe and worldwide leading to stricter immigration enforcement in every corner of the planet. “This is clear,” he said. “Absolutely clear.”
Breitbart News Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief watched and listened as Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris set out the country’s new approached to immigration. (Pic Courtesy Greece Migration Ministry)
Plevris also told Breitbart News that Vice President JD Vance’s message to Europeans last year, while widely criticized in Europe at the time, was actually quietly taken to heart by many Europeans at least when it comes to migration matters.
“We have close relationship [the United States and Europe],” Plevris said. “And I believe that now, and I’m sure that if the Vice President comes here, not only in Greece, but Europe—he will see that Europe changed the migration policy.”
“I believe that the relationship between the EU and the USA, we are the Western world,” Plevris added.
Plevris took Breitbart News inside the Centaur migrant control operations center at the headquarters of his ministry, a room that feels a lot like the Major League Baseball replay operations center in midtown Manhattan in that it is filled with television screens and real-time monitoring of migrant camps the government has set up around the country. Less than a decade ago, this building was a tobacco warehouse, but Plevris told Breitbart News that during the administration of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis the Greek government transformed it into the Ministry of Migration and Asylum headquarters complete with the operations center with real-time migration camp monitoring.
“This is the war room that we have,” Plevris told Breitbart News. “We have 33 facilities. That means that 24/7, we see exactly what happens. There are two types of facilities. In Greece, we have new legislation from September 2025. If a migrant comes here, if he has a refugee’s profile, that means he will take the asylum and we transfer him to an open camp. He has no benefits, but we give them the opportunity to take the asylum and if you take the asylum you can work here in Greece. This is 30 percent. Seventy percent are migrants that they don’t have a refugee profile. They come from safe countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Egypt. So we put them on detentions through the new law here. They make the application for asylum, and we examine the asylum application, but they are on detention. They are not free because they don’t have a refugee profile. If the asylum application is rejected, we have new legislation that means that we put them in two to five years in jail—in prison. After that, we send them back. But we give them also the opportunity that if you want to avoid two to five years in prison, you can go voluntarily back to your country of origin.”
The numbers here are astounding, according to Plevris. In the first half of this year, he said, there has been a 40 percent increase because of this law in the numbers of migrants who returned to their countries of origin rather than deal with Greece’s strict migration controls.
A second major part of Greece’s new law, Plevris told Breitbart News, is that no migrants get legal documents easily. He pointed out that this is a major difference with Spain, which through Ceuta is currently experiencing a major migration crisis with a massive crush of Islamic migrants coming from Morocco.
“The second part is that nobody can take documents,” Plevris said. “What is the difference with Spain? In Spain, as you know, before three or four months, they had a legislation, and if you were in Spain illegally but you find a job and you stay three months in Spain you can take documentation. That was, for us—it was a big problem because that for us is a pull factor. Now, in Spain, they have 1.2 million applications from illegal migrants that they want to take documents. That, for us, is a pull factor because you can understand if you can choose a country to go to, it’s a magnet.”
The migration camps are located all around Greece, some on islands in the Aegean near Turkey and others on the mainland including near the Turkish border where the Greeks have built a magnificent wall—much like Trump’s wall along the U.S. border with Mexico—which marks the European border with Asia and the Middle East in addition to Greece’s own border with Turkey.
“Without the wall we will have thousands of migrants,” Plevris said. “I believe you have a wall also.”
Breitbart News told him that Trump is almost done completing the wall in the United States.
“It’s very important,” Plevris said of the wall. “If you see the wall, when you have land borders— with a wall and the soldiers and the police officers, you can have zero flows.”
Plevris said that the Greeks have had “good cooperation with the Turkish Coast Guard,” and in just the past year Greece has seen a reduction of 70 percent—again, an astounding number—in overall migration flows into Greece from anywhere else in the world. He argued it’s because the world has gotten the message that unfettered illegal migration into Greece is no longer tolerated.
“It’s something very simple,” Plevris told Breitbart News. “When you come illegally into a country, if I put you on detention, that means you give a signal to your relatives in your country
