STA, 18 July 2022 - Slovenian police handled 6,006 cases of migrants crossing into the country illegally in the first half of the year, an increase of 75% from the same period a year ago. Almost a quarter of the migrants intercepted were from Afghanistan.

Police statistics show nearly half of all cases were handled by the Koper Police Department with the Novo Mesto Department also reporting considerable increase in cases.

The number of migrants indicating their intention to apply for international protection status nearly quadrupled to 5,209, mainly due to a strong increase in applications submitted by Afghanistan nationals.

The police also handled 6,101 applications for temporary protection, almost all of which were by Ukrainian citizens.

Afghanistan was the biggest source of illegal migration to Slovenia as the number of migrants from there more than doubled year-on-year to 1,316.

Pakistani nationals followed as the second largest group (718) ahead of Indians. The number of the latter rose from just 18 in the first half of last year to 473 in the same period this year.

There has also been a substantial increase in migrants from Nepal, from 46 to 274 this year. After no illegal migrants from Cuba or Burundi were registered in the first six months of 2021, 257 and 227 cases from those countries, respectively, were handled this year.

Of the 3,748 applications for international status received, 3,356 were solved, of which 98 positively. 40 applications were rejected, procedure was halted for 1,767 of them and 1,451 were thrown out.

Foreign law enforcement authorities returned 240 migrants to Slovenian police in the first half of the year, which compares to 77 in the same period a year ago. Most (173) were returned through airport.

Slovenian police sent back 1,206 migrants in the period, the vast majority to Croatia (1,115). In the same period last year a total of 1,658 migrants were returned by Slovenia, of whom 1,595 to Croatia.

STA, 15 July 2022 - Slovenia will start removing the fence from its border with Croatia on Friday. The fence was erected in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis that saw thousands of immigrants cross Slovenia from the south.

The news portal N1 reported that troops will start removing the 51 kilometres of barbed wire, after which the remaining 143 kilometres of wire fence will be removed by a contractor that is yet to be selected.

The launch of the removal will be attended by Interior Minister Tatjana Bobnar and acting Police Commissioner Boštjan Lindav.

The minister recently announced that Slovenia would change its migration policy, focusing on human rights and solidarity.

Countries must adapt their policies and measures to the situation in local and global environment and measures must be in proportion to the security situation, the ministry has said in a press release.

The fence was erected as a temporary measure. "It is inadmissible for it to become a permanent element of Slovenia's border policy."

However, the opposition believes that the government's decision to remove the fence had not been preceded with a security assessment and was made without expert reasoning.

New Slovenia (NSi) believes the security situation will deteriorate and recommends that government be selective in deciding which parts of the fence should be removed.

STA, 21 April 2022 - Slovenian police recorded 2,023 attempts at illegal crossing of the border in the first three months of the year, an increase of 77.5% over the same period last year. Afghanis account for over a third of all those intercepted, the latest police statistics show.

A total of 664 migrants were returned to foreign law enforcement, a 60% increase over the year before, with the vast majority returned to Croatia.

As the overall migrations figures rose, the number of requests for international protection surged, rising five-fold to 1,916, mostly on account of the uptick in refugees from Afghanistan.

The figures also include 300 Ukrainians, but this was before Slovenia activated the temporary protection mechanism under which all Ukrainian refugees are eligible for asylum and are processed in a fast-track procedure.

STA, 23 February 2022 - The police dealt with 693 instances of illegal migration in the first month of 2022 alone, more than double the figure recorded in January last year. By far the largest number of illegal migrants caught last month were Afghans, which is to be expected given the situation in the country, the police said.

The Afghan nationals accounted for almost half of all the migrants caught crossing the border illegally in January.

The Koper Police Department remains the busiest in catching illegal migrants, as nearly half of all the January cases were processed there, 328, a year-on-year increase of some two-thirds.

The number of caught illegal migrants increased also in the Novo Mesto area, where 19 cases were recorded in the same month last year and 162 in January 2022. The Maribor Police Department saw the number of illegal crossings rose from 70 to 125 year-on-year.

The number of requests for international protection was also much higher. The total was more than 500, three times more than in January last year, representing a marked increase in the number of Afghan citizens seeking asylum.

The developments may indicate an expected increase in illegal migration during the rest of the year, the police said.

STA, 17 January 2022 - Slovenian police recorded 10,067 attempts at illegal border crossing last year, a decrease of 31.2% on the year before. Asylum applications, however, rose substantially, official police statistics show.

While the number of migrants from Pakistan, Morocco and Bangladesh, among the top four source countries last year, dropped substantially, there were slightly more migrants from Afghanistan, which became the biggest source country with 3,208 migrants registered.

The number of migrants from Turkey more than doubled to 737. There was also a slight increase in migrants from Iran, of whom there were 475, and Kosovo, from 168 to 239.

Slovenia has long been mostly a transit country, but in recent years applications for international protection have started increasing as well, rising by 41% last year to 5,651.

Almost half the applicants were from Afghanistan, followed by Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The report says almost all Afghans submit asylum applications.

Despite requesting asylum, however, the vast majority of migrants leave the country before their applications have been processed.

"After they are accommodated in asylum facilities, most of them leave of their own accord and continue their journey to their actual destination countries," the police report says.

Another major change compared to 2020 is the number of persons returned to foreign law enforcement, which declined from more than 10,000 to just under 4,000. The vast majority, 3,858, were returned to Croatia.

STA, 17 December 2021 - The police apprehended a 34-year-old Bosnian man on Wednesday, who is suspected of smuggling 13 Pakistani nationals into Slovenia in August, for a fee and in conditions unworthy of human life, before leaving them stranded on a motorway shoulder near Celje in a broken-down car.

The Celje police had been notified on 30 August about a broken-down car stranded on a motorway shoulder near Celje. They found 13 Pakistani nationals crammed in the back of the vehicle, while the driver had escaped before the police arrived.

The migrants were in poor health due to transportation in inhumane conditions, and one of them was assisted by paramedics on the spot, before being taken to a hospital in Celje for treatment.

The Pakistani nationals were destined for Italy, and were brought to Slovenia from Croatia illegally. They were taken to an asylum centre in Ljubljana, while the police collected information on the runaway driver, who was subsequently found and detained on Wednesday.

The 34-year-old Bosnian man will be brought before an investigating judge today. He faces between three and 15 years in prison and a fine.

STA, 19 November 2021 - The Maribor criminal police have tracked down an international criminal gang involved in illegal migration in what was a lengthy international investigation. A number of suspects were arrested and detained in Slovenia, whereas the gang's leader was caught in Poland.

The investigation, which included criminal police forces from Slovenia, Austria, Poland and Hungary and was coordinated by Slovenian investigators, uncovered an illegal migration route running from Croatia or Hungary to Austria or Italy with Slovenia being a nexus point.

The investigation was launched when the police started investigating last year's arrival of a Tunisian citizen in Slovenia. The individual resided in the Maribor area without a residence permit, said the Maribor Police Department on Friday.

The Tunisian organised a small-scale migrant smuggling operation already in 2019. The police then established reasonable grounds to suspect that the foreigner returned to Slovenia to continue with this unlawful activity, so covert investigative measures were launched against him.

The investigation established that the Tunisian contracted a number of drivers, citizens of Poland, Ukraine, Pakistan and Tunisia, to help him smuggle migrants.

He was the leader of the gang, which carried out at least ten smuggling operations during the investigation. A minimum of 58 foreigners from Iraq, Pakistan and China were brought to Slovenia by the gang members.

The foreigners were required to pay some EUR 5,500 per person to get to the EU, meaning the criminal organisation obtained at least EUR 319,000 in unlawful financial gain from migrant smuggling.

The five gang members that were caught in Slovenia have been brought before investigating judges. All of them are remanded in custody.

The gang leader meanwhile fled Slovenia and was caught in Poland under a European arrest warrant. Another two gang members, Syrian citizens who have been residing in Slovenia, were arrested in the Maribor area on Thursday.

Following house searches and other activities carried out in line with the criminal procedure act, criminal charges will be brought against them, the police said.

The offence of illegally transporting foreigners in a criminal organisation is punishable by three to 15 years in prison and a fine.

STA, 14 October 2021 - Three Pakistani citizens were sentenced on Wednesday to prison for organising illegal transportation of foreigners across Slovenia as part of a criminal ring, and will also be expelled from the country for several years, the newspaper Dnevnik reported on Thursday. The trio had asked for international protection in Slovenia.

The prosecution held that 12 members of the ring organised and transported, or cooperated in, unlawful transportation of foreigners from the Croatian to Italian border, or from the Ljubljana Asylum Centre to Italy, in June 2019 and in June-to-October 2020. Among them were four Ljubljana taxi drivers, and three security guards from the asylum centre.

Judge Ana Klampfer Binder said when handing down the sentences at the Ljubljana District Court the Pakistanis, who had pleaded guilty, had abused asylum to commit crime.

They received sentences ranging from three years and a month to four years and four months, depending on the type of crime, the number of foreigners they helped cross the border, and the role they played in the ring.

The minimum prison sentence for such criminal acts is three years in prison and a fine. The three will thus also have to pay fines ranging from EUR 1,000 to EUR 5,000.

Dnevnik said that the three defendants have no assets, and in such cases the fine is transformed into additional days in prison.

As for the other members of the ring, Dnevnik said that several had also pleaded guilty.

The Prosecutor's Office told the STA that two sentences had been handed down in recent weeks, with one security guard receiving a year in prison and a EUR 700 fine.

The security guard, who will serve the sentence by doing 730 hours of community work, had left the door of the secured section of the asylum centre unlocked in order to obtain personal gain.

He had thus enabled five foreigners to leave before they would be fingerprinted and entered into the Eurodac, the EU's asylum fingerprint database, so that they could proceed towards their target EU country.

Four suspects refused to plead guilty at a pre-trial hearing and will go to trial, and one suspect has not been served the indictment yet because his whereabouts are unknown.

Prison sentences for smuggling foreigners for gain or acting within a ring increased in 2020 under the new legislation - from 1-8 years to 3-15 years.

STA, 7 October 2021 - The police caught 7,031 illegal migrants in the first nine months of this year, down by some 41% compared to the same period in 2020. The bulk of them, almost 6,200, came from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The police said there was an upward trend in illegal migration, but the uptick was smaller than expected.

As is usually the case, most illegal crossings of the border have been detected by the Koper Police Department (3,421). The number of such incidents decreased or roughly stayed level across Slovenia, except for the area patrolled by the Maribor Police Department, mainly due to those seeking to avoid Covid border control measures or traffic at border crossings.

The total of illegal migrants who requested international protection rose in the past month, particularly among Afghan citizens, but it was down for the entire nine-month period, from 2,775 to 2,449.

STA, 3 August 2021 - Ljubljana police have arrested seven suspects, of whom two foreigners, as part of two criminal rings that organised transport of over 200 illegal migrants from Bosnia-Herzegovina via Slovenia to Italy for financial gain in 2020 and 2021. Six suspects have been remanded in custody and one is in house arrest.

The first ring is suspected of having organised illegal crossing of the border and transport for 116 citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Ljubljana Police Department said on Tuesday.

The investigation targeted five suspects, each of whom had a specific task in the ring, which was led by a Slovenian citizen from the area of Ljubljana.

In Italy, the ring had at least three unidentified ring leaders.

The manner in which the ring helped illegal migrants get from Bosnia to Italy was such to pose a risk to the lives of the migrants, the police said.

Each illegal migrant was also charged some EUR 3,500 for the journey, with the ring estimated to have gained at least EUR 406,000 in illegal gain.

On 10 May Ljubljana police arrested three ring members, of whom two Slovenian citizens and one Bosnian.

The other ring is suspected of having organised illegal transport for at least 91 foreigners from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Bangladesh.

Six persons had been investigated, and four arrested in the sting on 17 June, of whom three were Slovenian citizens and one Serbian. The investigating judge then sent one of them into house arrest.

The gang is estimated to have gained at least around EUR 28,700.

In the first investigation, the Slovenian police cooperated with Italian authorities to exchange information, and in the second one with police from Italy and Croatia.