‘I want my baby to live with us’: ‘I was pregnant with a son, I was sick’
The parents of a mother and her two children were among the dozens of Irish people who arrived in Germany to join thousands of migrants and refugees who arrived on Monday, bringing an unprecedented flood of arrivals into the country.
The arrival of more than 6,000 people from Italy and the Balkans is the biggest since the second wave of migrants hit the country in March last year.
The group of about 400 people has been divided into families with one or two children.
They are being cared for by an Italian family and two families from Germany, the Italian foreign ministry said.
“It was a hard week but I feel proud to be a part of such a group,” said Irene Speranza, a 30-year-old nurse from the town of Tenerife, near the Spanish border.
Speranza said she wanted to bring her husband and her four-year old daughter to live in Germany.
She said the family had arrived in the UK on Monday morning and was due to be welcomed by German police at the end of the week.
The group of migrants, who arrived with a busload of other families from Italy, Greece and Albania, have been living in a tent camp in the city of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
On Sunday, German police arrested five people on suspicion of illegally entering the country through Hungary.
They are currently being held in custody, the Interior Ministry said.
The German state of Bavaria, where most of the arrivals have been held, has been criticised for lax controls on arrivals.
It said it was “fully co-operating” with the authorities and was working closely with the EU and other international organisations.