Salvini Vows Criminal Migrants Will Be Punished, Deported: ‘We Are Becoming a Serious Country Again’

Italy's Interior Minister and deputy Prime minister Matteo Salvini attends a press confere
EMMI KORHONEN/AFP/Getty Images
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

ROME — Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini has promised to expel a Nigerian migrant who attacked a passenger on a tram in Florence Friday morning, sending her to the hospital.

The Nigerian, a 22-year-old asylum seeker who was already deported once in 2017 and, after re-entering the country illegally, was again deported in 2018, punched a 36-year-old woman seated in front of her on the tram.

The assault provoked a scene on the tram, leading other passengers to restrain the woman until the police could arrive and arrest her.

The police took the Nigerian attacker to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, having found her to be in a “confused state,” Italian media reported. When questioned, she was unable to provide any reason for her assault on the other woman.

In a Facebook post, Salvini, who has been committed to restoring the rule of law, said that this sort of behavior would no longer be tolerated.

“She attacked a woman in Florence, punching her while both were on board the tram and all because ‘her body commanded it’,” Salvini wrote.

“The victim is a 36-Year-old, wounded by a 22-Year-old Nigerian already expelled in 2017, denounced in 2018, and an asylum applicant in Palermo. We are already at work to expel this criminal from Italy, and all those like her — hardly ‘refugees’!” he said.

“We are becoming a serious country again: only those who have permission may enter, whoever commits a crime will pay, and those who enter illegally will be deported,” he concluded.

Salvini was elected in 2018 on a platform of curbing illegal mass migration into the country, a promise that both his supporters and his detractors admit he has kept.

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