Italian Port Sets Migrant Record for 2021 with Over 2,000 Arrivals in 1 Day

The small Italian island of Lampedusa received more than 2,000 migrants on Sunday, prompting calls for the Italian government to step up its migration policies. It was the largest number of migrants to arrive in a single day at an Italian port this year, the Associated Press reported.

"The situation on Lampedusa is literally explosive,″ police union official Domenico Pianese said in a statement. "If we have another day like yesterday, with an incessant succession of disembarking, it won't be possible to manage public and health safety."

The number of migrant arrivals for 2021 is higher than the same period in the past two years but not as high as the numbers earlier in the past decade.

According to Interior Ministry figures, nearly 13,000 people had arrived by May 10, 2021. By this date in 2020, 4,184 had arrived and just over 1,000 had arrived by that date in 2019.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

Italian state radio said four boats arrived at Lampedusa island after being escorted the last miles to port early Monday by Italian coast guard or custom police vessels. The 635 latest arrivals followed more than 1,400 who arrived on Sunday.

Human traffickers, mainly based in Libya, but also in Tunisia, often take advantage of calm seas to launch unseaworthy boats toward European shores.

Many migrants slept on the dock after Lampedusa's migrant housing center, which had been empty until Sunday, rapidly surpassed its 200-plus capacity. Hundreds more were being transferred to an unused passenger ferry offshore for quarantine until they can be tested for COVID-19. Another commercial passenger ship was being dispatched to Lampedusa to take on some more.

Il Giornale di Sicilia, a Sicilian daily, said just before midnight Sunday, a boat dispatched by the port captain's office aided a fishing boat with 352 migrants aboard, some 9 nautical miles from the island. A few hours later, another coast guard motorboat took aboard 87 men in a boat farther out at sea, while successive hours saw more boats, some of them rusting fishing vessels, reach the island, the newspaper said. Among the latest arrivals were at least 13 women and eight children, the daily said.

The island's mayor, Salvatore Martello, renewed urgent appeals to the Italian government to deal with the sea migrant issue. Lampedusa lives off tourism, and Italy has just launched a national campaign to quickly vaccinate residents of tiny islands against COVID-19 ahead of the looming holiday season.

Right-wing anti-migrant leader Matteo Salvini, whose League party is part of Premier Mario Draghi's 3-month-old wide-ranging coalition, kept up his pressure for a government huddle. Giorgia Meloni, a far-right opposition leader, insisted that Italy immediately set up a naval blockade to thwart Libya-based traffickers from launching more vessels.

Political leaders on the left also pressed for effective management of the migrant arrivals.

Democratic Party leader Enrico Letta, a former premier, said there was no choice but to convert a European military mission, now tasked with enforcing an arms blockade against conflict-wracked Libya, into one that can manage rescue operations.

Letta urged the government to press the European Union (EU) to make good on pledges to have many of those rescued migrants who land in Italy transferred to other EU nations.

"Draghi's the right person, because on a European level he is listened to because he saved the euro (currency),'' Letta said, referring to last decade's financial crisis.

Many migrants are fleeing poverty in their African or Asian homelands and are eventually denied asylum.

In recent years, there have been similar surges in springtime in the number of migrant arrivals.

Last month, a rubber dinghy deflated in the Mediterranean north of Libya, and passengers' phone calls for help, relayed to Libya, Malta and Italy, failed to save them. About 130 migrants were believed to have perished in that shipwreck.