 GENEVA (AP) — Swiss border guards have caught a 21-year-old Eritrean trying to sneak into southern Switzerland inside a piece of luggage on a train from Italy, a tactic not previously seen by local authorities amid an influx of migrants trying to reach northern Europe.
– Border guards in Switzerland received quite a shock Monday as they watched a full-grown man emerge from inside a normal suitcase. The AP reports the 21-year-old man from Eritrea was trying to smuggle himself into Switzerland aboard a train from Italy. Guards boarded the train to check passenger documents and immediately became suspicious of the suitcase, which was traveling with the man's friend, according to the Telegraph. “It was not hard to know there was a person inside, given the weight and the movement of it,” the Telegraph quotes a border guard spokesperson as saying. Guards removed the suitcase from the train, then watched as the man started unzipping himself from inside of it. His attempted smuggling was even more impressive for the fact that he's 6 feet tall. Guards, who had to help the man fully extricate himself from his luggage, say they've never seen anything like it. After deciding not to request asylum in Switzerland, the man was promptly sent back to Italy. More than 3,400 migrants have been arrested attempting to enter the Ticino region of Switzerland from Italy since the end of May.