Full Coverage: Europe’s Migrant Crisis

Fatima Rezai’s journey to Greece took 40 days and 40 nights.

Turkey and the European Union clinched a landmark deal Friday aimed at stopping thousands of migrants from attempting to reach European shores.

European Union leaders arrived in Belgium again Thursday hoping to secure a crucial deal with Turkey to stem the flow of migrants arriving on Europe’s shores.

A plan by European Union and Turkish officials to stop migrants arriving on Europe’s shores by immediately sending them back to Turkey has been branded deeply immoral and possibly illegal by several human rights and refugee groups.

The developer’s cheerful blueprint, touting a leafy suburban haven, greets returning camp residents as they trudge through the gullies of dense mud that grabs boots and devours dreams.

While European Union leaders on Monday looked for Turkey to help stem the arrival of more migrants, Turkish officials sought an additional $3.3 billion to help the country handle the influx of newcomers.

With a one-way ticket home to Iraq in his hands and seven months’ worth of frustration over intransigent German bureaucracy in his heart, Gazwan Abdulhasen Abdulla gave up on his dreams of a better life in Europe.

A Turkish court on Friday sentenced two Syrian smugglers to prison terms of four years and two months each in connection with the deaths of five people including 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who galvanized world attention on the refugee crisis when a photo was published of him lying lifeless on a beach.

Wael Alagha was curling up for the night on the cold ground outside a freeway rest stop.

A devastating refugee bottleneck has left thousands of men, women and children languishing on blankets and cardboard in public parks in Greece and has brought diplomatic tensions in Europe to new highs.

European leaders faced with overwhelming numbers of migrants are tightening their border controls and toughening their rhetoric in an effort to manage the crush of people.

The European Union police agency says authorities dealing with Europe’s migrant crisis have lost track of about 10,000 unaccompanied children over the last 18 months amid fears that organized crime gangs are beginning to exploit the vulnerable youngsters.

Within hours of each other, the two wooden smuggling boats sank in the Aegean Sea near different Greek islands, killing more than 40 people, many of them children.

The head of the European Union’s leadership body warned Tuesday that the 28-nation bloc must develop a better strategy for handling the migration crisis, as it faces criticism that its existing policies do not work.

It was one of the defining images of 2015: small boats crowded with migrants making a perilous bid to reach Europe.

More than 1 million migrants and refugees have crossed into Europe this year, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday, passing a symbolic milestone amid the fallout of war, poverty and persecution in Africa and the Middle East.

At the break of dawn, spotters on the northeast coast of Lesbos assume their positions at lookout points along the rugged sea cliffs.

After weeks of journeying from his native Iran, through Turkey and into Greece, Khaled found himself stuck in Athens with little hope of making it to Northern Europe, where he hoped to make a new life.

Where lithe young women once competed for Olympic gold in rhythmic gymnastics, young men from Afghanistan now kick a tennis ball around in a game of impromptu soccer.

For six months, I have been watching the news about the refugees and migrants making their way across Europe.

Political asylum is not what it used to be.

Scenes of Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis.

Greece’s prime minister lashed out Friday against European “ineptness” in handling the migration crisis, after 22 more people drowned in two new shipwrecks as boatloads of Middle Eastern refugees and economic migrants sought to reach the Greek islands in rough seas.

Authorities on the Greek island of Lesbos said Thursday 38 people are believed missing after a wooden boat carrying migrants sank.

Austria, a strong critic of building of fences to keep out migrants, announced plans Wednesday to erect barriers along parts of its own border, but insisted the move was meant solely to bring order to the flow of people entering the country.

Thousands of migrants surged into tiny Slovenia on Saturday as an alternative route opened in Europe after Hungary sealed its border to their free flow, adding another hurdle in the frantic flight from wars and poverty toward what they hope is a better life in Western Europe.

KENT, Britain — All summer and into the fall, Britain — and the wider European Union — has been convulsed by fear.

When I saw the images of Hungarian police spraying crowds of Syrian migrants with water cannons, and the razor wire border fence, and the thousands of people packed inside trains like cattle at the Keleti station in Budapest, and when I heard the Hungarian prime minister say that his aim is “to keep Europe Christian,” I was horrified but not surprised.

Inundated with half a million asylum seekers already this year, Europe is sharpening its latest message to would-be new arrivals: Don’t come.

When anti-immigrant chants echo off the splendid, ornate buildings of this bustling city on the River Elbe, Dresden’s residents are, for the most part, mortified.

European Union leaders tried to restore some integrity to their group’s name by agreeing early Thursday on new measures to alleviate the continent’s migrant crisis despite deep rifts that have opened up between member nations.

Over the strong objections of some, government ministers from the European Union voted Tuesday to resettle 120,000 refugees, distributing them across the continent but making only a small dent in Europe’s huge migrant crisis.

Just three years ago, the European Union basked in the glory of a Nobel Peace Prize and boasted of being a tight-knit community bound by “European values” of democracy, diversity and dignity.

Authorities across Europe struggled to impose some order Monday on the rivers of migrants flowing into and across the continent as political leaders staked out sharply differing positions at the start of a key week of talks to resolve the crisis.

It’s not just Europe telling refugees to stay where they are.

Secretary of State John F.

Thousands of exhausted refugees and migrants made their way Saturday into Austria, the final way station before the coveted destination of Germany, after navigating a series of debilitating detours along the increasingly ragged frontiers of the European Union.

A new pressure point built up along Europe’s migrant trail Thursday as Croatia found itself overwhelmed by thousands of asylum seekers heading north and said it could handle no more.

They’ve made it all the way to what most asylum-seekers consider the promised land – but many fear the gates of Germany will ultimately be closed to them.

Europe’s refugee crisis boiled over into violence Wednesday when Hungarian security forces unleashed water cannons and tear gas on asylum seekers who tried to break through a razor-wire fence preventing them from crossing the Hungary-Serbia border.

As asylum seekers continued to pour into Europe, Hungary choked off entry Tuesday by shutting down key border crossings but immediately found itself locked in a tense standoff with thousands of frustrated migrants — and several neighboring countries.

This is a humanitarian crisis of astounding breadth.

Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly targeted in a January shooting rampage for its cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, is stirring controversy on social media with its take on the death of a Syrian toddler found on a beach in Turkey.

They stand out, if one looks closely, amid the massive human wave washing its way from the shores of the Aegean to the foot of the Bavarian Alps.

It was a onetime Nazi showpiece, an indelible emblem of defiance during the Cold War’s Berlin airlift, and more recently, an unexpectedly beloved public space in this most postmodern of cities.

European Union leaders Monday agreed to resettle 40,000 refugees to relieve a deepening humanitarian crisis, but failed to devise a relocation plan for an additional 120,000 people seeking asylum.

A beleaguered Germany announced Sunday that it would temporarily halt free entrance for asylum seekers, a dramatic step likely to exacerbate bottlenecks at other European frontiers to the south and east, where tens of thousands of migrants and refugees are already enduring desperate hardships.

Fear that Islamist militants are lurking amid the massive influx of refugees flooding Europe have been debated in forums such as Facebook, think tanks and government circles.

Across Europe, and most particularly in Germany, the question resonates: Do humane policies toward desperate people who hope to start a new life in this prosperous country spur others to undertake the difficult and dangerous journey?

Schisms widened Friday among European Union states over how to share the burden of an enormous wave of refugees and migrants, even as thousands of asylum-seekers, frustrated by delays, marched on foot from the Hungarian border toward Vienna, the Austrian capital.

The sight of Germans and Austrians cheering the arrival of trainloads of weary asylum-seekers has been a source of inspiration to the desperate tide pouring into Europe from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Responding to the millions of Syrians who have fled their war-ravaged country in search of sanctuary, the Obama administration said Thursday that it would look to resettle “at least 10,000” Syrian refugees in the United States by the end of September 2016.

Under international pressure to ease a deepening humanitarian crisis, President Obama on Thursday ordered his administration to accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees for resettlement over the next year, an increase compared with the 1,300 brought to the U.S. since the war started but well short of the numbers that human rights groups and others had sought.

Obstacles eased Thursday at the northern and southern ends of Europe’s ever-crowded migrant trail, with Danish authorities moving to open the path for asylum-seekers to head onward to Sweden and Greece largely clearing a huge backlog that had built up on the tiny tourist island of Lesbos.

Just inside the Hungarian border, a Syrian man named Mohamed stood on the railroad tracks he had followed from Serbia.

Australia will nearly double its humanitarian refuge quota to take in another 12,000 Syrians and Iraqis this year, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced Wednesday in a major policy shift.

Passionately defending the right of asylum for those fleeing war and persecution, the head of the European Union’s executive arm on Wednesday urged member states to divide 160,000 refugees among themselves and to enact broad reforms governing mass entry to the continent.

Pressure on countries resistant to taking in refugees escalated Tuesday as leaders of welcoming nations called for mandatory quotas across the European Union and proposed fines on member states that refuse to comply.

To hear their Syrian parents tell it, Yasser and Taha, ages 6 and 9, were the driving force behind the family’s decision to make an arduous overland trek across half of Europe to reach safety in Germany.

Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, now in its fifth year, more than 4 million refugees have fled the country while nearly twice as many have become internally displaced.

Nine-year-old Ali peered out the train window at the verdant, unfamiliar landscape.

Just two months ago, Germany was suffering from yet another image problem, deplored as a harsh and heartless overlord in its effort to impose financial discipline on its European neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected a call to host refugees from Syria and elsewhere, saying that while Israel is “not indifferent to the human tragedy of the refugees,” it is not in a position to take them in.

The leading edge of a migrant wave began dispersing across Germany on Sunday, or continuing to the north and west, as Pope Francis called on Europeans to not only welcome asylum seekers but also give them shelter and help them begin new lives.

On a continent still haunted by World War II, ghostly – and ghastly – shadows of that convulsive conflict have been impossible to avoid as Europe grapples with its biggest refugee crisis since the war ended 70 years ago.

In the end, a river ran through it. A river of at once joyous and troubled humanity.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday that Britain will help resettle thousands more Syrian refugees amid mounting pressure to deal with the growing humanitarian crisis.

As European leaders engage in a blame game over which nations have done too little to ease the plight of refugees from the world’s deadliest conflicts, the U.S. response has come in for scrutiny and been found sorely wanting by human rights advocates.

The photo was heartbreaking: A toddler in shorts and a red T-shirt lay face down at the edge of the surf, waves lapping at his head, his body settled into the sand like a piece of driftwood.

The photo told a familiar story of dispossessed refugees from war-torn Syria.

The little boy on the beach had a name, and it was Aylan.

As editors, we are constantly asked to make judgments about the photos we publish that document the mayhem in our troubled world: Beheadings of hostages, machete attacks on villagers, gunfire sprayed through a shopping mall, body cam video from police shootings — much of the time, we decide our readers don’t need to be shocked and sickened with the violence swirling around us.

What would Donald Trump do about the immigration crisis in Europe?

Hundreds of migrants chanted defiant slogans outside Budapest’s main international train station Wednesday as Hungarian police blocked them for a second day from seeking asylum in Germany and other wealthy European Union countries.

The architects of the European Union set out decades ago to create an alliance free of national obstacles to the movement of people and the products of their labor.

Chaos in Europe over the daily influx of thousands of migrants and refugees deepened Tuesday as authorities in Hungary briefly shut down the main railway station in Budapest and European leaders sparred over who was to blame for worsening the crisis.

It seemed a modest proposal, turning part of a sports center in this town of 20,000 people into a temporary shelter for about 130 migrants and refugees.

The battered train station in this border town has a certain lost-in-time quality, looking a bit like the set of a World War II film.

A truck found abandoned on an Austrian highway contained the bodies of 71 migrants, including four children, and four suspects in the case have been arrested in Hungary, said Austrian and Hungarian authorities on Friday.

Prosecutors in Sicily have detained 10 suspected people traffickers believed to have crammed migrants into the airless hold of a vessel crossing from Libya in which 52 died.

Up to 200 people were feared dead in the latest boat capsizing off the Libyan coast, international aid groups said Friday, as dozens of bodies washed ashore or were retrieved from one sunken ship’s flooded hold.

At first the police thought there’d been an accident.

The camp, perched on a dusty patch of ground amid agricultural fields, has only one nearby tap for running water.

As tens of thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty attempt to reach safety in Europe, the death toll rose above 2,400 on Wednesday, and skirmishes broke out along the Serbian-Hungarian border.

Anti-immigrant riots, border barriers and hate crimes won’t deter the thousands of refugees from Syria and other war-torn regions, a U.N. special envoy on migrant rights warned Tuesday after days of violence against those seeking to reach safety in Europe.

Israel on Tuesday began releasing about 1,200 African migrants from a remote desert detention facility after the Supreme Court overturned legislation allowing them to be held without charges for up to 20 months.