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THE competition among United Nations officials to make the most irritating comment about the UK continues.

There was the UN human rights expert who said sexism was more pervasive here than in any other country she had visited.

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Then the UN Special Representative for International Migration described British plans to build a wall around the port of Calais as inhumane.

Now we have Volker Trk, of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, vying hard for first prize.

Last week Mr Trk said the UK needs to step up and help to address the migrant crisis.

Never mind that we have committed hundreds of millions to help refugees in the camps around Syria, or that in 2016 we resettled more refugees than any other country in the European Union, the panjandrum decrees that we should double the number of refugees we take in.

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He criticised UK politicians for irresponsible rhetoric, called for more understanding and asked for everyone who works in this area to listen to the voice of reason within.

It is Mr Trk and his ilk who are ignoring reason and who have been catastrophically irresponsible in stoking mass migration.

It is time their approach is roundly rejected.

We do not need more understanding or one more heave on refugee numbers.

The migrant crisis of the past few years has been a lesson in the dangers of allowing heart to overrule head.

From Angela Merkels refugees welcome policy to the NGO boats searching the Mediterranean for migrants to rescue, short-term compassion has escalated the crisis, strengthening the magnet that draws millions to Europe from developing countries.

We may see fewer pictures of packed boats on our screens these days but the numbers are growing.

More than 83,000 migrants arrived in southern Italy in the first half of this year, up 19 per cent on the first six months of last year.

AP:Associated Press

More than 2,300 have died on the crossing in 2017.

As The Sun reported yesterday, in Calais a new Jungle camp is forming, with about 1,000 migrants sleeping rough.

The line between refugees and economic migrants is increasingly blurred.

The top three home nations of those arriving in Italy in the first quarter of this year were Nigeria, Bangladesh and Guinea.

UN figures suggest that seven in ten who have come to Libya are escaping poverty.

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Last year, when the UK took in 750 children or young people from the Jungle, fewer than ten were from Syria.

From Senegal to Bangladesh, millions have their sights set on a life in Europe.

Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, recently warned of an exodus of biblical proportions if we dont confront the problem.

Which of our leaders will dare to say it that this surge from poorer nations must be stopped more forcibly?

That for the sake of Europe and the developing world a much harder line must be drawn in the sand between them?

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Most will sympathise with those who yearn to escape poverty, especially when the internet has pressed their noses to the window of the prosperous West.

But behind every one who makes it to Italy are many more who will be emboldened to set out on the same journey. The potential numbers are dizzying.

An acceleration of the current crisis would be a disaster not only for the West but for the developing nations who would lose a swathe of young, fit, enterprising citizens.

Long-term, the most benevolent and sensible strategy is to improve life in the poorest countries and so weaken the desire to migrate.

But tackling this push factor will be the work of decades.

There are two pull factors that must be addressed urgently.

The first is the knowledge that once rescued in the central Med, passage to mainland Europe is assured.

The people traffickers ploy is to deliver the migrants not to Italy, but just past Libyas territorial waters so they can be rescued by the NGO ships beyond.

Though motivated by noble instincts, the charities patrolling these waters are effectively aiding the traffickers, and they must be stopped.

The Italians are beleaguered and need more international support to work with the Libyan coastguard to return the boats to Libyan ports.

AP:Associated Press

As Bill Gates (not a noted hardliner) has said: Europe must make it more difficult for Africans to reach the continent via the current transit routes.

Turning back the boats might not be a palatable proposal short-term but until and unless the central Mediterranean is viewed as a route of no hope, the numbers will increase, along with the profits of the people traffickers.

The second great pull factor is the UNs woefully out-of-date Refugee Convention.

Its definition of an asylum-seeker as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution in their own country is elastic enough, with a little imagination, to cover many millions of people.

AP:Associated Press

It was developed before smartphones let those in the developing world learn their rights under international law.

If simply stepping on to the hallowed ground of the West will earn you a hearing and a decent chance of staying, you will do anything to reach that land.

Only if western countries reform the convention, radically tightening the definition of persecution, do we have a hope of controlling the crisis.

No doubt various UN officials would say such actions lack compassion.

The alternative is dragging out this disaster, drawing more to endanger their lives, enriching the people smugglers, overwhelming European nations and hardening hearts against genuine asylum-seekers.

That does not sound much like compassion to me.

The Times/News Syndication

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Being tougher on the migrant crisis is kinder in the end short-term compassion only makes matters worse - The Sun

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the head of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) Hakan Fidan met to discuss common security issues on Monday.

Following a closed-door meeting at the Presidential Palace in Belgrade, a written statement from Serbia's presidency said bilateral security issues were among the topics discussed at the meeting:

"President Vucic emphasized that the migrant crisis, with growing terrorist threats, is the security challenge that both the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Turkey are facing."

The two men also agreed that for Serbia and Turkey, Monday's meeting represented an important step in strengthening bilateral cooperation, with the goal of preserving peace and stability in the region as well as throughout Europe.

Vucic also asked Fidan to call on Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, to visit Serbia.

Serbia, a non-EU member, still faces significant challenges from the migrant crisis.

Migrants in Belgrade have been sleeping in abandoned premises near the city's railway station and at other makeshift shelters ever since Hungary and Croatia closed their borders to those traveling the so-called 'Balkan route'.

There are still around 8,000 migrants still in Serbia; the security forces have also returned about 20,000 people who had tried to cross the country's borders illegally.

Police say they have arrested around 2,000 human traffickers since the migrant crisis began.

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Serbian President Vucic, Turkish intelligence chief Fidan discuss security, migrant crisis - Daily Sabah

By Claude Berube and Chris Rawley

This summer while many European vacationers bask on sunny Mediterranean beaches, out in the water, hundreds of people are fighting for their lives while an increasingly more complex and robust collection of maritime non-government organizations (NGOs) (see Table 1) alternatively try to rescue them from drowning or send them back to Africa. The line between maritime human trafficking and a flow of refugees at sea has been blurred. In response to the ongoing migrant wave, the group Defend Europe recently raised enough money to charter a 422-ton ship, the C-Star, to convey a team of its activists to Libya. They arrived in the search-and-rescue zone off the Libyan coast on August 4-5.

The authors understand the complexities of this situation in the central Mediterranean particularly with regard to strongly held political positions by both sides. We try not to take sides in political battles, especially as we sit on the board of directors of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). Our interest is simply to discuss how organizations use the sea as a venue to proactively accomplish their own goals and deter their opponents goals. Our piece at War on the Rocks discusses the search-and-rescue NGOs and the approaching counter-NGO ship C-Star. As it has arrived on station off Libyan territorial waters, we spoke with Thorsten Schmidt, spokesman for Defend Europe.

What is the C-Stars mission? We came to the conclusion, Schmidt says, to get activists who are independent and fair. We need to get our own ship to get people there and to observe the left-wing NGOs. Schmidt contends that the media has been embedded with the NGOs and therefore have a bias in support of their work. When asked if C-Star had an embedded reporter or asked for a reporter from any media organization, he stated that they just wanted their own activists to report with cameras.

C-Star from the perspective of the vessel Aquarius on August 5 around 20 nm off the Libyan coast. (via Paco Anselmi/Twitter)

The search-and-rescue (SAR) NGOs have operated between Libya and Sicily for two years. When Defend Europe began to consider their own maritime mission, they were approached by the owner of a ship to charter. The ship was the C-Star (formerly the Suunta a Djibouti-flagged floating armory in the Red Sea). The owner is Sven Tomas Egerstrom, formerly associated with the Cardiff-based Sea Marshals which he was terminated from on 26 March 2014. Although there have been some questions as to whether C-Star has armed guards aboard, it is unlikely. Schmidt told us that the ship had no weapons aboard. More practically, we assessed in our previous piece that Defend Europe does not have the funds to support a ship for an extended mission beyond two weeks as well as the more costly endeavor of an armed guard team. Ships transiting the Gulf of Aden will only pay armed guards for a few days. That is a function of both need and cost in higher-risk areas.

The ship was detained both as it transited the Suez Canal and when it pulled in to Famagusta, Cyprus. It is unknown what exactly happened. Several reports suggested the ship had false documents or was transporting foreign nationals to Europe. Schmidt states that in both cases the authorities found nothing on the ships.

Once on station, C-Star will spend a week in the company of search-and-rescue NGOs and on the lookout for both migrant boats and human traffickers. Their cameras will be their weapons. According to Schmidt, nine out of ten migrants using the sea do not migrate from war-torn countries as refugees. When they reach the Libyan coast, he says, human traffickers put them on gray rafts and enough food and fuel to get to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit of Libya where search-and-rescue NGOs then pick up the migrants and take them to Europe. The traffickers use smaller, high-speed boats to follow the rafts then, when the NGOs have rescued the migrants, the traffickers take the motors and return them to Libya. Schmidt notes that in some cases, the traffickers join the migrants so that they can establish networks in Sicily and beyond. Italian authorities in Lampedusa this week seized the Iuventa, owned by the SAR NGO Jugend Rettet, accusing them of aiding and abetting traffickers.

If C-Star encounters a migrant boat in distress, Schmidt says it will render assistance first by notifying the MRCC in Rome, and then bring them aboard. According to Schmidt, the ship has hundreds of life vests. When asked about how it might accommodate for potentially dozens of refugees from a boat in distress, he says the ship is fully equipped with an extra amount of water and food. Of course there are several activists on board with medical aid skills. Instead of taking the migrants to Sicily or other European ports, they intend to take the migrants to closer, non-European ports such as in Tunisia. It is unknown if they have secured the diplomatic agreements to make those transfers happen. Defend Europe argues that this makes sense since there are closer countries than Italy that arent unstable like Libya.

Defend Europe wants an end to human trafficking but, as Schmidt says, we are just one ship and you cant stop it with just one shipWe are an avant garde but need help. Though they have an abbreviated mission this time, the $185,000 they have raised ensures that they will look to a second and third mission. Already, he says, two more ship owners have contacted them.

Table 1: NGO Rescue & Interdiction Vessels Operating in the Mediterranean

Claude Berube teaches at the United States Naval Academy and is an officer in the Navy Reserve. He has published three non-fiction books and two novels. Follow him on Twitter @cgberube. Chris Rawley is a Navy Reserve surface warfare officer and entrepreneur. Follow him on Twitter @navaldrones. Rawley and Berube frequently write and speak on maritime organizations and both serve on the Board of Directors of CIMSEC. The views expressed are theirs alone and not of any organization with which they are affiliated.

Featured Image:A banner reading Stop Human Trafficking attached to the side of the C-Star. (Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP)

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The Med Migrant Crisis and Defend Europe - CIMSEC

Illegal immigration across the southwest border surged 15 percent in July compared to the month before, Homeland Security announced Tuesday, signaling that President Trumps early success in stemming the flow of people jumping the border has begun to lessen.

The border patrol nabbed 13 percent more illegal immigrants last month than in June, while officers at the ports of entry saw a 23 percent spike in the number of inadmissible aliens showing up and demanding entry. The number of Border Patrol arrests is deemed a yardstick for the overall flow of people.

July usually sees a drop, so the surge signals a change in the usual seasonal patterns.

David Lapan, spokesman for Homeland Security, said theyre still trying to figure out what the trends mean.

The short answer is we dont know what all of those causes are, he told reporters.

The numbers of families and unaccompanied alien children (UAC), which have been particularly troublesome cases, also saw huge spikes. UAC were up 27 percent in Border Patrol statistics, while people traveling together as families surged 46 percent.

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Still, even with the rise month-to-month, the numbers are lower than they have been in years.

Customs and Border Protection officers at the ports of entry recorded 6,833 inadmissible aliens trying to enter. The Border Patrol, meanwhile, nabbed 18,198 illegal immigrants who snuck across the border.

The combined number of 25,031, while the highest under Mr. Trump, is still lower than any other month under President Obama dating back until December 2011.

Mr. Obama oversaw a deterioration at the border in his second term, with children and families streaming north from Central America, believing lax enforcement would give them a chance to earn a foothold in the U.S.

The Trump administration has been trying to dig out of that hole with a series of policies including targeting for deportation UAC and families whove had their day in immigration court but who are ignoring orders or removal.

Mr. Trump has also asked for money to begin building his border wall, with prototypes to be built later this year.

The president has repeatedly cited progress on the border as one of his major successes early in his tenure. He was so pleased with the progress that he pointed to it as one of the reasons he tapped former Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly to become his new chief of staff at the White House.

On a year-to-year basis, the gains are indeed stunning. In July 2016 the Border Patrol nabbed 33,737 illegal immigrants 85 percent more than this years total. Fewer people apprehended likely means fewer people crossing.

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Illegal immigration spikes in July; still lower than Obama years - Washington Times

The Department of Justice released new numbers Tuesday afternoon showing voluntary departures and deportations of illegal immigrants are up by 30 percent. Here are the numbers between February 1 and July 31, 2017:

Total Orders of Removal: 49,983

Up 27.8 percent over the same time period in 2016 (39,113)

Total Orders of Removal and Voluntary Departures: 57,069

Up 30.9 percent over the same time period in 2016 (43,595)

The court system has also streamlined a number of deportation cases to final decisions.

Total Final Decisions: 73,127

Up 14.5 percent over the same time period in 2016 (63,850)

DOJ officials are touting the numbers as a "return to the rule of law" under the Trump administration. For months the Department has been cracking down on sanctuary cities and Homeland Security has conducted a number of ICE raids to rid communities of violent criminal aliens.

"Pursuant to President Trumps Jan. 25 Executive Order, 'Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements,' the Department of Justice mobilized over one hundred existing Immigration Judges to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention facilities across the country. Over 90 percent of these cases have resulted in orders requiring aliens to depart or be removed from the United States. The Justice Department has also hired 54 additional Immigration Judges since President Trump took office, and continues to hire new Immigration Judges each month," a statement released by DOJ Tuesday states.

"In addition to carrying out the Presidents Executive Order, the Justice Department is also reviewing internal practices, procedures, and technology in order to identify ways in which it can further enhance Immigration Judges productivity without compromising due process," the statement continues.

The increase can certainly be attributed to former Homeland Security Secretary General John Kelly, who is now serving as President Trump's chief-of-staff at the White House.

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DOJ: Illegal Immigrant Voluntary Departures and Deportations Up By 30 Percent Since Last Year - Townhall