Newly released figures from Frontex, the EU’s border protection agency, revealed on Thursday, September 15th, that over 114,000 illegal migrant crossings across the Mediterranean to Italy were recorded between January and August, twice the number recorded during the same period last year, accounting for half of the illegal border crossing detected in 2023.
The agency, in its latest press release, stated that the number of illegal border crossings along the bloc’s external borders jumped by 18% in the first eight months of 2023, exceeding 232,350 instances, and marking the highest total for the period from January to August since the 2016 migrant crisis.
