Italy's Matteo Salvini shuts down what was Europe's biggest migrant center

Italy's hard-line interior minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday has shut down what was once Europe's largest migrant centre in Sicily, while underlining the decrease in migrants since the populist government took office a year ago.

Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister, told reporters in Mineo, Sicily, that the number of migrants in centers across Italy has gone down from 182,000 a year ago to 107,000. He also added that asylum requests had halved to about 30,000.

The centre in Mineo has been slated to close for years, with prosecutors uncovering illegal activities inside including an alleged Nigerian drug trafficking ring. It was also part of a huge bribery and kick-back scandal involving migrant housing. Mineo at one point held as many as 4,000 migrants.

Salvini said that its closure would free up hundreds of thousands of euros a day in public money as well as law enforcement resources -- even though one of the reasons that the previous government didn't close Mineo was due to its role as an employer and economic driver for the area.