Greece’s migration minister, Dimitris Vitsas, struck a similar note. “It’s a lie that the borders will open,” he said, and urged migrants to return to the state-run camps from which they had come.

Not all those at the station had somewhere to go, however.

Ali Elmishal, 11, from the Syrian city of Raqqa, was there with his parents and five siblings. He said the family slept in parks in central Athens and that he sold tissues at traffic lights. “We want to go to Germany,” he said in English.

Mohamed Ali Al Khalid, 25, who arrived in Greece three months ago, fleeing poverty and strife in Idlib, Syria, also wants to travel to Germany, to join his sister in Frankfurt, he said. “There’s no work for me here, there’s nothing here,” he said, standing on the train tracks with a suitcase at his feet, saying his wife and two children were back in Idlib, awaiting an update.