1. General Situation
Around 500 people (exact numbers are difficult to estimate) are currently sleeping in a park in front of the train station and in the train station itself. According to Schweiz am Sonntag around 50 children are still sleeping in a church (overseen by Caritas). It is quite probable that quite some others are spending nights in other places as well. Many have been pushed back from Switzerland, where they expressed their desire to seek asylum but were not given the possibility to do so by the border guards. If people have expressed their desire to continue their journey onwards to Germany, the border guards can legally send them back to Italy as there is a readmission agreement between the two countries
Most of the people are from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan. There are also people from elsewhere, we spoke to several Gambians, for example.