Greece says it’s investigating claim migrants were illegally deported back to Turkey

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece’s outgoing prime minister says he has ordered a probe into a report that authorities illegally deported back to Turkey a group of migrants, allegedly leaving them on a raft at sea for Turkish authorities to pick up. Kyriakos Mitsotakis — who will be replaced Thursday by a caretaker prime minister ahead of elections on June 25 — strongly denied that Greece has an official policy of returning newly arrived migrants to Turkey. Such illegal deportations are known as pushbacks. In an interview with CNN late Tuesday, Mitsotakis said that he takes the alleged incident reported by the New York Times “very seriously.” He described the practice of illegal deportations as “completely unacceptable.”