Minister: Cyprus tops EU in migrant repatriations

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The interior minister of ethnically divided Cyprus says the country ranks first among European Union member nations in the number of migrants it repatriates relative to its population of just over a million people. Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said Thursday that nearly 7,000 migrants were sent back to their home countries from Cyprus so far this year, accounting for 70% of the people who entered the country illegally. He says Cyprus repatriated 17% of the migrants who arrived without authorization last year. Nouris says some 95% of all asylum-seekers enter from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and cross a United Nations-controlled buffer zone to apply in the south, where the internationally recognized government is seated.