Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is defending Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini as a hero. Salvini currently faces six years in prison over allegations of “kidnapping” migrants in relation to his efforts to deny them entry into Italy. “Europe’s bravest patriot punished for stopping migration. Those who defend Europe are constantly penalized. What is going on? [Matteo Salvini] is our hero!” Orban wrote on X on Monday, September 16.
Salvini, who served as Interior Minister under a prior government, is being prosecuted in Sicily for refusing to allow migrants to disembark from a ship in 2019 on the island of Lampedusa. Prosecutors are accusing Salvini of “kidnapping” because he refused to let a migrant taxi ship dock on the island for 19 days under his policy of closing Italy’s ports to migrant “taxi” ships operated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
“I would do it all again: defending borders from illegal immigrants is not a crime,” Salvini said over the weekend on social media.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has also defended Salvini in the case, stating, “It is incredible that a minister of Italy risks six years in prison for doing his job defending the nation’s borders, as required by the mandate received from its citizens.”
In her first year in office, Meloni’s government saw levels of illegal arrivals that had not been seen in nearly a decade. However, in 2024, the number of illegal boat crossings to Italian territory finally slowed.
Meloni has also cracked down on migrant taxi NGOs, recently impounding the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) migrant taxi ship Geo Barents last month.