During a coastal surveillance action, the maritime surveillance team, with the help of a Thermal Vision Vehicle (TVV), detected a suspicious vessel in the Aegean Sea approaching land in the eastern part of the island.

Through the thermal vision equipment, it was possible to verify that it was a rubber boat. Immediately the TVV team made contact with the GNR vessel that was conducting maritime patrols in the area of operation, enabling the rescue of 39 people, including six children, 16 women, one of them four months pregnant and 17 men.

The migrants were placed on the Portuguese vessel and transported to Vathy Harbour, where they landed safely and were handed over to local authorities. Not only was it possible to ascertain that the rescued migrants came mainly from Congo, Cameroon, Senegal, Eritrea and Somalia, but also to transmit police information to the Greek authorities, which made it possible to identify and detain the facilitator of the crossing of these migrants.

GNR, in this FRONTEX mission, develops actions at land and sea borders to prevent, detect and prosecute illicit acts related to illegal immigration, human trafficking and other cross-border crimes, fundamentally contributing to the safeguarding of human lives. To date, in 2019, the deployed GNR military on the island of Samos has detected 280 migrants, having rescued 92 of them.