‘Don’t come here. We will put you in jail” – Greece’s new Immigration Minister WARNS

The Greek immigration minister has WARNED those planning to come to his country as migrants about ending in jail.

His message to thousands of young men waiting in North Africa to come to his country for a life in Europe is clear: ‘Don’t come here. We will put you in jail or send you back home.’

In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Thanos Plevris said: ‘The Greeks, like the rest of Europe, want to help real refugees, but we will not be taken for fools. It is the end of the fairy tale that those coming to Greece and Europe in incredible numbers are all women and children. They are mainly men aged between 18 and 30 who are economic migrants. We are not a hotel any more.

‘Don’t come here. We will put you in jail” – Greece’s new Immigration Minister WARNS

‘Many are from safe countries, such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Now we are telling them that if you sail in illegally by boat to Greece, do not expect asylum but get ready for five years in jail or a ticket home instead.’

Greece is on the frontline of Europe’s out-of-control migration crisis that, as Britons know well, has reached northern France where trafficking gangs are using fleets of small boats to send tens of thousands of migrants to Dover.

Greece, on the other side of the continent, has its own relentless wave of newcomers.

This year, at least 10,000 migrants have reached its biggest island, Crete, from Libya a few hundred miles away across the Mediterranean Sea.

In the first week of this month alone, just after Mr Plevris was appointed immigration minister, a surge of 4,000 arrived illegally on the island, which is struggling to cope.

The coastguard and police are holding the uninvited foreigners in emergency camps in empty warehouses where they get a chilly welcome, basic rations and sleep on concrete floors. As we witnessed, they are young men growing dangerously angry while incarcerated against their will in the stifling summer heat.

‘Our big problem today is with Libya and who they are sending over,’ the plain-speaking and unapologetic Mr Plevris said as he promised to stifle the migration flow for ever.

‘Libya is using big vessels carrying 200, even 300, people. Of all those who have arrived, 85 per cent are male, and the majority of them are young. They are using Greece to enter Europe illegally for a new life.

‘If we just continue to sit and watch, it will never end. Three million migrants are today massing in Libya.

‘Now I plan to deter them from setting off for here.’