“It’s the only route currently open if you want to get from Greece to the other parts of the European Union,” said Peter Van Der Auweraert, head of mission for the International Organization for Migration, a department of the United Nations.

But that depends on one’s definition of open.

To leave Bosnia, migrants must cross the icy hills and mountains that line the northern border with Croatia. Former battlefields, the slopes still contain land mines from the Balkan wars.

Migrants who make it safely through the snow are usually met with a brutal response by the Croatian authorities.

In Northern Europe, the 2015 crisis is over — and the Croatians are determined to keep it that way.

For more than a year, the Croatian police have systematically seized migrants spotted entering the country from Bosnia and forced them back across the border without letting them apply for asylum.

In interviews in Bosnia last month, dozens of migrants, residents, doctors and aid workers provided a consistent account of migrants being deported without due process — and often beaten and robbed before being dumped in remote areas, like Glinica.