Almost 2,000 migrants housed in detention centres - PQ

There are currently 1,978 people housed in Malta's migrant detention centres, Byron Camilleri said.

The Home Affairs Minister, who was replying to a parliamentary question from PN MP Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici on Tuesday, said that 23 of these were currently in the process of being deported.

The rest, Camilleri said, are irregular immigrants who travelled to the island by sea.

Malta last took in migrants on 9 April, when 60 people were allowed to disembark after being rescued by the army.

At the time, the government said that, following that intake, the country's ports were closed and no migrants would be allowed in during the COVID-19 crisis. 

The government had said that all the army's resources would be focused on containing the coronavirus, sparking a controversy on Malta's international obligations to save the lives of people in danger at sea. Around the same time, Italy took a similar decision to block migrant rescues.

Later this month, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a bid by NGO Repubblika for the Strasbourg court to force Malta and Italy to rescue migrants who find themselves in difficulty at sea.

Since then, Prime Minister Robert Abela has insisted that Malta has successfully balanced the need to safeguard its people from the coronavirus with its international obligation to save lives.

UNHCR statistics indicate that 2019 was a record year in terms of the number of migrants who disembarked in Malta following rescue in the Central Mediterranean, with 3,406 such sea arrivals having been registered that year.

The top nationalities of the persons who disembarked in Malta were Sudanese, Eritrean and Nigerian.

Sea arrivals in 2020, as of the end of February, stood at 989, figures from the UN's refugee agency show.