Exclusive — Inside Greece’s Migrant Control Operation Center: Migration Minister Reveals How Trump Win Sparked Worldwide Border Crackdown

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 that ‘I’m on detention’ and ‘They want to send me back.’”

 Plevris gave Breitbart News some more numbers next, breaking down what happened in 2025’s first half versus 2026 when Greece had this new law implemented. “In the first semester of 2025, we had 3,200 illegal arrivals from Egypt through Libya, and only 69 returns,” Plevris said. “What we do through the new law is we put them on detention. We said to them ‘if your asylum application will be rejected, you will have a penalty from two to five years in the prison.’ So your only opportunity to be free is to go back. What are the numbers this semester? The first semester of 2026, we have had 802 arrivals—so from 3,200 down to 800—and 330 returns. I want to have the same returns as arrivals, but we know we have procedure and this is a much better type. So it’s very important to send the clear message.”

 Plevris said that the Mitsotakis government since it was first elected has made clear the policy of Greece is a “strict and fair migration policy.”

“We have close relationship [the United States and Europe],” Greek Migration Minister Thanos 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.” (Pic Courtesy Greece Migration Ministry)

“This is the policy of Kyriakos Mitsotakis,” Plevris said. “We have a strict but fair policy.”

 During Trump’s second term in office, there has perhaps been no major ally of the United States more closely aligned with what the president is trying to do as much as Greece. In the past year plus since Trump’s inauguration, Breitbart News has made multiple trips here and interviewed Mitsotakis twice as well as several top other officials in the Greek government. On everything from trade to national security to geopolitics to energy to immigration and more, Greek officials from Mitsotakis on down have expressed not just openness to Trump but also a common cause usually only seen from allies as close to the United States historically as the French or British. When those other allies including those two and others like the Italians broke with Trump when he went to war with Iran, Greece stood steadfast in providing U.S. support and the use of military bases here to help accomplish the president’s military objectives.

Trump has reciprocated warm lavishing praise, not only posting multiple Breitbart News stories from here on Truth Social but also speaking highly during press availabilities both of Greece as a country and of Mitsotakis as a leader. Just a few months ago, for instance, Trump called Mitsotakis a “terrific guy” and Greece a “terrific” ally in response to a Breitbart News interview from back in April.

 Deeper cultural stories from here too show more common cause with the United States, as this deeply Orthodox country very much believes in God and faith and family. These cultural similarities to the United States—or at least Trump’s electoral coalition that propelled the president into the White House twice—seems to bond the two peoples even closer than just the news issues of the day.

In the first years of the Mitsotakis administration, the government faced major problems from various pro-open borders non-governmental organizations (NGOs). “They wanted, for example, open borders, or they said that the refugees and the migrants have the right to go to the other countries,” Plevris said of NGOs influencing policy here back in previous years before these new laws passed last year. “That was a huge problem for the migration policy in Europe.”

 But Plevris said that when President Trump won in the United States first in 2016, but then especially after his comeback in 2024, that the American voters who propelled him into office unleashed a global swing against open borders and towards saner migration policy.

 “I believe that we have something very important,” Plevris said. “First of all, the elections of the President Trump, I can say, because that migration policy—it wasn’t only European migration policy but it was also global migration policy and the USA policy. When Trump came back, it was a policy that they said: ‘You can’t come here in the USA.’ It was very important that the USA changed their policy. During the previous administration you had also the previous government funding NGOs here—funding NGOs here.”

 Plevris answered “yeah, exactly,” when asked if these new migration controls the Mitsotakis government has implemented are directly because Trump has done similar stuff in the United States after his election wins—and if Trump’s win has had a worldwide global impact on migration policy everywhere. He also said “yes,” when asked if Greece has modeled some of its immigration policies after Trump’s in the United States.

 “Now we have a great cooperation, and we have also a memorandum of understanding with our asylum system with your asylum system, and we take best practices<“ Plevris said. “This is very important for us. But the message was very important because the countries that we wanted stricter migration policy, it was very difficult to make this policy when we were against the USA policy or the policy of other countries in the EU. The second very important development was countries in Central and Northern Europe like Germany, Denmark, and Holland also changed their policy. For a lot of years in Germany, we had a policy that, ‘Willkommen in Deutschland, you can come in Germany.’ So that was very important. Greece, from the first day of 2019 when Kyriakos

 Mitsotakis took the government, our priority was a stricter policy.”

 During the previous leftist government led by former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who at the time led the Syriza party but now leads ELAS—Tsipras previously was even a member of the Communist Party—Greece was crushed by migration.

 “We had, in only one year, in 2015, 1 million arrivals,” Plevris told Breitbart News. “Can you understand what that means for a country of 10 million people?”

 To put what Plevris is talking about in context for an American audience, one million migrants in one year is a tenth of Greece’s population in one calendar year. In the United States, that would be like about 35 to 40 million migrants arriving in a single year—significantly higher than anything that poured in under the open borders regime of now former President Joe Biden and now former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Even the most extreme estimates—nobody really knows exactly how many migrants Biden and Harris let into the United States—are not even close to that high for their entire full term in office.

The highest estimate, from Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller, is around 20 million total. So the crush that hit Greece at the end of the Tsipras government in one year was approximately double the worst possible estimates of the entire Biden administration’s effects on the United States, a much bigger country land-wise and population-wise.

 So what Plevris is saying, generally speaking, is that Mitsotakis began cracking down on this all the second he took office—but the global political winds shifting, much like winds changing on the sea, has allowed the Mitsotakis government to more closely resemble what Trump is doing in the United States. And he is saying that phenomenon Trump electrified is contagious worldwide, with many other governments across the planet but especially here in Europe following suit.

 In addition to the migration camps for prospective refugees and the control center from which Plevris and his team can monitor those, Plevris highlighted for Breitbart News how Greece has a wall on its border with Turkey in Evros.

 “We have the wall in Evros,” Plevris told Breitbart News. “We also have soldiers and police officers there.”

 In 2020, Greece faced a crisis similar to what Spain is facing from Morocco right now. “They tried, at least 20,000 migrants, to come in a day,” Plevris said, something he affirmed is “very similar” to what Spain is experiencing in Ceuta.

 “But we had the wall,” Plevris said. “That was very important—a real wall. They tried from the gate to enter.”

He said the wall is “important not only for Greece” but “that is the EU borders,” something other European leaders understood and many of them visited to show support for Greece’s efforts to control the migration with the wall and military and law enforcement officials.

 “European leaders came. European leaders came here,” he said of the 2020 crisis. “At the border. They supported us. They understood, and that was the first signal to the EU policy.”

On Spain’s current crisis in particular, Plevris said “it’s very important to control this flow and return them back immediately.”

 Plevris, who sat down with Breitbart News on Monday in Athens, said he and other migration ministers from across Europe were meeting the next day and that the Spanish government has pledged to return the migrants to Morocco.

 “They say that they will return them back,” Plevris said. “For us, that’s very important. They say that the majority of them, they have returned, but for us it’s something very important that we don’t want to have these matters. It’s very important to control the migration. So we support, as the EU, Spain to return them back. It’s very important because we want to have a strict migration policy.”

Greece works closely with Spain and other European countries on the Mediterranean Sea in what is called the Med-5—which is comprised of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, and Malta.

Greece works closely with Spain and other European countries on the Mediterranean Sea in what is called the Med-5—which is comprised of Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, and Malta. (Pic Courtesy Greece Migration Ministry)

 “We have the same challenges because we have also borders with other countries,” Plevris said. “We also have different kinds of policies. [Spanish] President [Pedro] Sanchez gave the opportunity to be somebody legal in Spain, and we believe that this is actually not a good signal. Because I told you also, they have now 1.2 million applications from illegal migrants that they want to become legal.”

 The Greek government has been more diplomatic with Spain than Italy, for instance, which temporarily cut Spain out of its Schengen arrangement that allows free travel between various European countries. Spain, in response, imposed restrictions on travelers from Italy.

 Plevris said that while European nations are in fact “frustrated” with Spain, “Europe wants solidarity.”

 “We want to support Spain,” he said. “Because it’s something that nobody wants to have these matters… We want policies that they don’t send wrong messages to the smugglers or to give hope to refugees.”

 Plevris said that with 27 different governments across the European Union, it’s understandable that “we have different points of view” but also now “everybody says that it’s very important to have stricter migration policies.”

 Much like how illegal immigration into the United States is facilitated by criminal organizations like the Mexican drug cartels and coyotes, Plevris told Breitbart News that illegal immigration into Europe is fueled in part by what he called “smugglers.”

 “The smugglers send the message, ‘look, you can be legal in Spain,’” Plevris said.

 Asked to explain who the smugglers are and how the government fights them, Plevris said technically that they are not in his purview but for the police and the ministry of civil protection—a different part of the federal government. But he made clear the smugglers have a “motive” and that is that “they try to find the gaps that we have” in the system then exploit them.

 He told a story about how recently smugglers encouraged potential migrants to take advantage of a loophole in European Union migration policy affecting minors.

“What was the policy? That if you are a minor, we can not put you on detention, and you are free,” Plevris said. “We saw that we had a lot of flows from minors 16 or 17 years old. “So the smugglers told to the families, ‘send your son, 17 years old.’ 17 years old, you can understand—he can work. He has benefits. So we had to stop this benefit. So we see the smugglers try to find the gaps. The smugglers, they put refugees and migrants in the boats. The trip from Libya to Crete or from Libya to Italy, it’s a very difficult trip. We see the small boats they put. They don’t have any interest in the well-being of the migrants or refugees.”

 Plevris also said oftentimes when they catch smugglers, they find they are connected with the open borders NGOs—in that all of a sudden their lawyer will be the lawyer for the open borders groups.