migrant boat journey

Inside a doomed migrant boat journey from Mexico to California

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MAKING A TERRIBLE MISTAKE

"IS IT 1OO% SAFE?"

PANIC AS BOAT SINKS

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Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer and Kristina Cooke; editing by Kari Howard

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Alexandra covers the 2024 U.S. presidential race, with a focus on Republicans, donors and AI. Previously, she spent four years in Venezuela reporting on the humanitarian crisis and investigating corruption. She has also worked in India, Chile and Argentina. Alexandra was Reuters' Reporter of the Year and has won an Overseas Press Club award.

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Record number of migrants arrived this year in Spain’s Canary Islands, most from Senegal

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A record number of migrants have made the treacherous boat journey on the Atlantic Ocean to Spain’s Canary Islands this year, and most of the 32,000 people are coming from Senegal .

The islands, off West Africa, have been used for decades as a stepping stone to Europe. Boats also depart from Gambia, Mauritania, Morocco and Western Sahara.

According to an Associated Press tally of figures released by Spain’s Interior Ministry and local emergency services, at least 32,029 people landed on the Canary Islands from Jan. 1 to Sunday. That exceeds the migration crisis of 2006, when 31,678 migrants disembarked.

Smugglers in Senegal pack young people looking for better opportunities in Europe into old artisanal fishing boats, charging them around 300,000 CFA francs ($490). The journey from Senegal to the Canaries usually takes a week of difficult upwind sailing for around 1,000 miles.

Migrant boats frequently shipwreck or disappear in the Atlantic.

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To avoid border controls, smugglers take longer journeys, navigating west into the open Atlantic before continuing north to the Canaries — a detour that brings many to the tiny westernmost El Hierro island, at times overwhelming local authorities and emergency services.

Once a beacon of democratic stability in West Africa, Senegal has seen sociopolitical unrest with violent clashes earlier this year. President Macky Sall’s embattled government has dissolved Ousmane Sonko’s opposition party, popular among young voters.

A lack of jobs, the rising cost of living, depleting fishing stocks and poor healthcare are some of the reasons pushing thousands to leave Senegal for Spain, said Saliou Diouf, a Senegalese migrants’ rights activist and founder of the association Boza Fii.

The political crisis and crackdown on the opposition have extinguished any remaining hope young people had of a better future at home, Diouf added.

“They are looking for a way out,” he said. “They no longer trust the system.”

Scores of Senegalese migrants dead or missing after monthlong voyage for Spain

More than 60 migrants are feared dead after a Spanish fishing vessel off the Atlantic island of Cape Verde rescued a boat that set out a month ago.

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Their journey is one of the longest and most dangerous to Europe. At least 512 people have died so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration, though the figure is believed to be a vast undercount.

Diouf, who documents cases of missing migrants, says it’s impossible to know how many people have died because of the lack of information and transparency. Many migrants are not deterred by reports of shipwrecks, he said. They see those who make it and want to try their luck too.

While Senegalese migrants often struggle to obtain the necessary work and residency permits to stay in Spain, many eventually find ways to make a living in European cities or rural farmlands. When they do, the remittances they send home make a huge difference in their families’ lives.

Faced with the record number of arrivals this year, Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska flew to the Senegalese capital of Dakar last week to press the government to do more to stop boats from leaving.

Grande-Marlaska urged his Senegalese counterpart, Sidiki Kaba, to “act more quickly” and avoid more deaths.

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“We agreed that we must combat irregular immigration with force,” Kaba said, acknowledging irregular migration as a “huge challenge” for Spain, Senegal and the European Union.

Spain has nearly 40 police and civil guard officers, four boats, a helicopter and an aircraft deployed in Senegal to monitor the country’s more than 310-mile coast and crack down on smuggling networks in collaboration with local authorities.

Madrid says the joint effort has successfully stopped 7,132 people from leaving Senegal this year.

During the 2006 “cayucos crisis” — named after the large canoe-shaped boats from Mauritania and Senegal often used by smugglers — Spain signed agreements with 10 African countries for them to accept returned migrants and stop new boats from leaving.

In the following years, arrivals to the Canary Islands declined and had been largely manageable until they spiked again in 2020 as a result of increased surveillance along the favored Mediterranean Sea route, among other factors.

Associated Press writer Babacar Dione in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this story.

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Nine Rescued in Atlantic After Days on Wreckage of Migrant Boat

The survivors told Spanish authorities that about 60 people had been aboard when their vessel set out for the Canary Islands from Senegal.

By Emma Bubola

After a migrant boat sank and about 50 of its passengers went missing in the Atlantic Ocean off northwestern Africa, nine survivors endured two days on the semi-submerged wreck before they were found, according to Spanish rescuers.

The rescue happened on Monday near the coast of the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago and a destination along a migration route on which, experts say, many other shipwrecks are likely to have gone unreported.

The rescue occurred after a merchant ship reported a sinking vessel 60 nautical miles south of El Hierro, an island in the far west Canaries, said Carmen Lorente Sánchez, a spokeswoman for the Spanish maritime safety and rescue organization.

She said rescuers found nine people on board and took them to the island’s airport. The survivors later told the authorities that the shipwreck had occurred two days earlier and that around 60 people were on board when they departed from Senegal, Ms. Sanchez added.

The Canary Islands received about 40,000 migrants last year, a sharp increase from the previous year, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

Helena Maleno, the founder of Caminando Fronteras, a nongovernmental organization that tracks the deaths of migrants trying to reach Spain, said many people have embarked on unsafe fishing boats to reach Spain from Senegal because of the recent political upheaval in the country . Other people fled the effects of climate change and instability in the Sahel , she said.

“And in many occasions,” she said, “they go missing in the depth of the ocean.”

About 16,000 migrants have reached the archipelago this year from West African nations such as Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal, following the so-called Atlantic route, according to the I.O.M.

While the number of arrivals is close to that of those reaching Italy across the Mediterranean Sea, far fewer deaths are reported by the United Nations on the Atlantic route: 179 so far this year compared with 524 in the central Mediterranean.

Caminando Fronteras has reported 1,500 deaths on the route from Mauritania this year, a figure much higher than that used by the United Nations; the group says it compiles its figure from databases of distress warnings and of missing people.

The Atlantic route is likely to be “at least as dangerous as the Mediterranean,” said Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman with the I.O.M. “But it’s much harder to find evidence.”

The length of the route and the low quality of the boats used by the migrants make the journey particularly dangerous, said Jorge Galindo, a spokesman for the I.O.M.’s Global Migration Data Analysis Center. He added that it could take up to eight days for boats leaving from Senegal to reach El Hierro.

But parts of the route are less patrolled than the central Mediterranean, he said, so many boats likely go missing without anyone knowing.

Earlier this month, Brazilian authorities found a boat adrift in Pará State containing nine bodies, alongside documents and objects that they said indicated the passengers were migrants from Mali and Mauritania.

Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in London, covering news across Europe and around the world. More about Emma Bubola

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Inside a doomed migrant boat journey from Mexico to California

By Alexandra Ulmer and Kristina Cooke

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As the 40-foot cabin cruiser lurched for 12 hours on the Pacific on its dead-of-night journey to California from Tijuana, a Mexican migrant named Eberardo tried to keep the panicked passengers' spirits up.

"Think of God and what you most love: a child, your mother," Eberardo, 36, who was trying to get back to his family in the Midwest after being deported to Mexico, remembers saying. "Let that give you strength."

Finally, the craggy California coastline grew closer.

"We are going to make it," Eberardo told the 31 other passengers, all but one of them Mexican migrants like him who had paid a smuggler for the risky journey on that day in early May.

Then, as it was nearing San Diego's popular hiking area of Point Loma, the boat hit something – rocks or a strong wave.

"Water is getting in!" somebody shouted.

Julio, a 25-year-old Mexican warehouse worker, told Reuters he tried to make it up to the deck, but he couldn't get through the crush of other passengers. He said he and another man tried to break open a window, as aggressive waves threw them from one side of the room to the other.

Soon, the water was up to Julio's neck. Two women nearby began to sink.

"I could see the anguish in their eyes," Julio said. He too felt himself sinking, but an image of his 3-year-old daughter came to him and he thought: No, I have to survive.

The shipwreck, which killed three people, provided a deadly example of an increasing trend on the coast of California: More migrants are crossing by sea to the United States as the land border has become harder to cross, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It reports that arrests at sea in the San Diego area have more than doubled from fiscal year 2019 to reach 1,626 as of mid-August.

The 2021 fiscal year has also surpassed other recent years for migrant deaths in the Pacific in the San Diego area. Aside from the people who died in the May shipwreck, the 2021 count also includes a man who was found dead in a boat in Carlsbad and a man found in the surf near Wipeout Beach in San Diego on May 20, after smugglers told passengers to jump in the water and swim to shore.

Two migrants on board the Salty Lady, the boat that capsized with Eberardo aboard, say he saved lives by keeping a close watch on the boat's captain, 39-year-old U.S. citizen Antonio Hurtado, who they say was acting erratically throughout the trip.

Hurtado's lawyer and relatives didn't respond to requests for comment. Hurtado has been charged with human smuggling, including smuggling resulting in death, and assaulting a Border Patrol agent after the shipwreck while agents were trying to place leg shackles on him. He has pleaded not guilty and is in prison awaiting trial. In 2018, Hurtado was sentenced to 60 days in custody for possession of a controlled substance, court records show.

This account of the sinking of the Salty Lady is based on interviews with Eberardo and two other migrants aboard and some of their family members and lawyers, as well as eyewitnesses who saw the ship break apart. The migrants and their families all spoke on condition that they be identified only by their first names.

Eberardo "was our angel," said Edgar, a 31-year-old Mexican farmer who was aboard.

For Eberardo, his actions were also a chance at redemption.

MAKING A TERRIBLE MISTAKE

When Eberardo was 6, he said, his father's shot-up body was found on a countryside path near their farm in Mexico. The family suspected he was the victim of a land dispute, but Eberardo's mother cautioned her five children that it was too risky to investigate, Eberardo said.

She started waking Eberardo up at 3 a.m. to help on the farm by fetching water and herding cattle, he remembers. Exhausted, he'd fall asleep at school, only to spend the evenings selling cheese and cream to neighbors until 10 p.m. Eberardo left school at 13, working odd jobs pumping gasoline or manufacturing doors.

When his older brother suggested he come to the United States, Eberardo, then 19, leapt at the chance. He crossed the border into Texas without being detected, and settled in the Midwest, where he worked in factories and fell in love with a Mexican woman, who was also in the United States illegally and had a son from a previous relationship.

Eberardo and his wife, Maria, had two daughters, both U.S. citizens, and he devoted himself to them. He proudly recounts changing most of the diapers. Photos on his Facebook page show his daughters in frilly dresses and high ponytails.

He earned around $2,000 a month working in an aluminum foundry. But carrying the molds, which weigh up to 180 pounds, took its toll; when, in pain, he went to the doctor around Christmas 2014, he was told he had three herniated discs, he said.

The injury left him barely able to walk, Eberardo and Maria said, let alone work a factory job. He took on some $12,000 in debt.

Then, Eberardo said, he got an offer: Deliver a kilogram of heroin to a grocery store parking lot. He says he hesitated. But his contact kept mentioning it, he said, and eventually the lure of being able to chip away at debts with the $5,000 on offer was too strong.

The heroin client, however, was an undercover law enforcement officer, court records show. On Sept. 18, 2018, Eberardo was arrested and charged with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

In court records explaining how he should be sentenced, the government acknowledged that Eberardo's childhood had been affected by his father's death.

"But this crime was not borne of desperation, nor was it preordained by his upbringing," the government's sentencing memo reads. "Ultimately, the defendant made a series of poor choices as a grown man — choices that were his to make, just as the consequences of those choices are his to bear."

Eberardo pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was released early, on April 7, 2021, due to good conduct, records show. He was immediately picked up by immigration officers and, two days later, sent back to Mexico.

"IS IT 1OO% SAFE?"

Within a month, Eberardo said, he found a smuggler in Tijuana who said he could cross him over to the United States by sea.

"Is it 100% safe?'" Eberardo asked him.

"Nothing is 100%, only death," the smuggler replied. "But it's 99% certain that you'll make it."

Eberardo said he paid a Mexican smuggler $200 and promised to pay the rest of the $17,000 fee upon arrival in the United States. The smuggling ring told him it would pretend the cabin cruiser was a tourist boat, and advised Eberardo to dress the part. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, and bought a white baseball cap.

Around 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, Eberardo was shuttled out on a small boat to the cabin cruiser. It was his first time at sea. All the migrants were Mexican, bar one Guatemalan national, which is reflective of the demographics of recent sea crossings, said Aaron Heitke, chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol in San Diego.

Heitke said smugglers are using a range of watercraft, including local wooden fishing boats known as pangas, pleasure crafts and even jet skis.

Hurtado's boat was bigger than most but wasn't in good shape, according to another border official. "It wasn't the most seaworthy vessel out there," said Michael Montgomery, the head of CBP's air and marine operations in San Diego.

Sea arrests in the San Diego sector had been climbing gradually since 2015. But in fiscal year 2020, they jumped by more than 90% to 1,273, which agents and advocates say may be due to tighter enforcement of the land border and pandemic-related border closures. Sea arrests in fiscal year 2021, which ends September 30, have already surpassed 2020's number.

President Joe Biden has kept in place a policy enacted under former President Donald Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic that allows border patrol agents to immediately expel migrants they encounter. The policy has blocked most migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Overall border arrests have risen to their highest monthly levels in two decades, although those numbers are inflated by repeat crossers who were previously expelled.

With the land border in San Diego "pretty operationally secure," Montgomery said, "the path of least resistance now would be the water."

Aboard the Salty Lady, Hurtado instructed the migrants in English to crouch as he set off for the United States, according to the three migrants who spoke with Reuters. Hurtado didn't speak Spanish, the migrants said, so Eberardo said he helped translate, although his own English is shaky.

After a while, Eberardo's back started to hurt from crouching. He sat down on what he would later discover was the gasoline tank. From there, he had a better view of Hurtado, who he said was resting his head on the wheel.

"Wake up," Eberardo said. Hurtado appeared to indicate that he didn't want to be touched, and some of the migrants said they were fearful of angering him. Hurtado kept falling asleep, though, so Eberardo said he would nudge the wheel to rouse him. He must have done so around seven times, said Edgar.

The Pacific was getting rough. Hurtado wasn't able to control the boat any longer, according to two of the migrants on board. Then, in an apparent attempt to steady the ship, "he dropped the anchor," Edgar said. "He came back in and said, 'Sorry, guys.'"

Eberardo said after a few hours of the boat rocking violently in place, Hurtado tried to lift the anchor but struggled. Eberardo stepped in and cut the anchor line with a saw, he and Edgar recounted.

But when Hurtado tried to accelerate, the motor died. The boat began to lurch, and migrants worried it was about to capsize.

Julio said he and his cousin, who was also on board, began shouting that they should get help before it was too late. "Who should we call?" Julio asked. Someone suggested contacting immigration authorities. Another passenger argued against it, afraid of being detained and deported.

The discussion was moot. Nobody had cell phone reception.

PANIC AS BOAT SINKS

As the boat began to sink, panicked migrants thronged one of the cabin's two doors.

Eberardo worried the boat was about to tip over.

"Come to the other side so you can be counterweights," he said he yelled.

But it was too late; the ship turned on its side, submerging the door. Eberardo hauled his way up to the other side of the boat, which was still above water.

As he was about to jump into the Pacific, he turned back and lowered his hand into the cabin to see if he could help anyone still trapped. A young man grabbed it, and Eberardo said he yanked him to safety. Edgar, the farmer on board, confirmed that the young man described the rescue to the group when they were in custody later. The young man couldn't be reached for comment.

After he jumped off the ship, Eberardo clung on to a red float, but it started to drag him out to sea. He kicked his legs and tried to stay afloat, the white baseball hat he'd bought in Tijuana lost in the surf. Hikers on the oceanfront trail watched in shock. Someone called emergency services just before 10 a.m. The U.S. Coast Guard and state and local agencies rushed to the scene.

Out in the waves, Eberardo's back started to give in. "There came a moment where I couldn't swim anymore," he said.

A rescuer on a jet ski speeded over. Shivering and hyperventilating, Eberardo hauled himself on.

He said he was dropped off on a rescue boat and was asked to try to revive an unconscious man while rescuers tried to fish out other people.

Eberardo started pumping the man's chest, but had no response. He pressed on, but eventually checked his pulse. Nothing.

Crouched over the man's body, Eberardo began to cry.

"He looked my age. I started to think that maybe he was a father, like me," Eberardo said.

Eberardo is unsure who the man was. Three people died that day: two women and a 29-year-old man named Victor Perez. Contacted through a lawyer, Perez's widow declined to comment.

Eberardo was interviewed by border authorities and then held for around two months in a San Diego prison as a material witness in the case against the captain. He was ordered to be released on July 2 after his lawyer argued that his depositions as a material witness were over and there was no reason to keep holding him.

Edgar and Julio, detained in the same prison as material witnesses before being sent back to Mexico in June, credited Eberardo for their survival. "When I was in the cell, I started to think: If Eberardo hadn't come, what would have happened to us?" Edgar said.

On July 7, Eberardo was sent back to Mexico. He is renting a room by himself and looking for a factory job, but has so far been unsuccessful and is dependent on money Maria sends him. His family is hesitant about joining him, both he and Maria say, especially as his eldest daughter aspires to study medicine in the United States.

"I can't stop feeling guilty," Eberardo said of his decision to get involved in the drug business. "I destroyed my life with the mistake I made."

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer and Kristina Cooke; editing by Kari Howard)

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A rescue ship saved them from the sea. Now these migrants find a tough road in Europe

Ruth Sherlock

A wooden boat was spotted at night in international waters north of Libya by Doctors Without Borders' rescue team aboard the MV Geo Barents. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

A wooden boat was spotted at night in international waters north of Libya by Doctors Without Borders' rescue team aboard the MV Geo Barents.

ABOARD A SHIP ON THE MEDITERRANEAN — It's 2 a.m. and the team on the MV Geo Barents rescue ship has just spotted a boat in distress.

The migrants on board the small wooden fishing vessel are waving the light of their cellphone screens to attract attention after the boat's engine cut out. They've been drifting for hours in the pitch black, hundreds of miles offshore in the Mediterranean Sea.

When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only stand. The overcrowded boat rocks precariously and if the crowd moves too fast toward the rescuers' dinghies, it could capsize.

The wooden boat was carrying 162 people, including 22 women and 29 children. It departed for Europe from Zawiya, Libya, on Oct. 6. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

The wooden boat was carrying 162 people, including 22 women and 29 children. It departed for Europe from Zawiya, Libya, on Oct. 6.

Migrants from different countries sit on a raft headed to the MV Geo Barents rescue ship. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

Migrants from different countries sit on a raft headed to the MV Geo Barents rescue ship.

Amid pleas for help, someone yells there's a baby onboard that must be saved first.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, runs these search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea in what's considered the deadliest migration route in the world.

In October, this NPR correspondent and a photographer spent 10 days with them to witness their work.

Had the staff on the MV Geo Barents not been keeping watch this night from the bridge of the ship — the lights off to better spot through binoculars any movement at sea — the migrants on this smugglers' boat bound for Italy might have joined the more than 3,000 others that the International Organization for Migration says drowned or disappeared while crossing the Mediterranean in 2023.

Onboard the Geo Barents, migrants receive blankets as well as food and clothing. They have the opportunity to receive medical screening, possible psychological support, as well as information about seeking asylum in Italy. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

Onboard the Geo Barents, migrants receive blankets as well as food and clothing. They have the opportunity to receive medical screening, possible psychological support, as well as information about seeking asylum in Italy.

A Doctors Without Borders crew prepares for rescue operations during the first few days of sailing to international waters north of Libya. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

A Doctors Without Borders crew prepares for rescue operations during the first few days of sailing to international waters north of Libya.

After this rescue, only hours later, the team spots a second boat in need of help. By morning, they've saved 258 people.

For the rescued migrants there is overwhelming relief.

A man breaks down and weeps with his head in his hands. Families hold each other close and clutch the bags of towels, hygiene kits and food handed out by MSF staff.

The stories these migrants tell are harrowing: They left countries gripped by war like Syria and South Sudan , trying for months or even years to reach Europe. The route most often took them through Libya, where migrants are frequently detained and tortured. MSF medical staff tell NPR that rape is so common that many women migrants take contraception from the start of the journey, in the terrible knowledge that this could happen to them.

The EU agrees on a migration deal, but critics warn of possible rights abuses

After all this, they arrive in Europe to find a political climate with a heated argument over migration — specifically how to stop people like them from coming. Several countries, including France and Germany, imposed border controls in the normally free zone of movement within the EU. Italy passed tougher measures to lengthen the time migrants can be held in detention, and to limit the number of rescues that charities like MSF can perform at sea.

MSF's rescue operations pick up migrants traveling on international water from countries including Syria, Ghana and Pakistan. Some have attempted this trip multiple times. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

For one Syrian boy, the journey took years

Among those taken aboard the MV Geo Barents is a 16-year-old boy who traveled alone from Syria. NPR won't name him as he's a minor.

He wants to become a businessman in Europe. He's whip-smart and speaks in near-perfect English, learned from watching American movies, he says.

He grew up during the civil war in Syria that followed an uprising against President Bashar Assad's government in 2011. He remembers when two car bombs detonated on his street as he walked to his grandmother's house as a young child. "People told me to run home," he says.

The oldest of three siblings, he says he always felt a weight of responsibility toward his family. At 13, he overheard his neighbors speaking about a route to reach Europe on smugglers' boats across the Mediterranean. He decided he had to go.

"Their life was not safe," he says. "So that's why I left Syria; to help my family and to bring them to Europe."

Asylum-Seekers Make Harrowing Journeys In Pandemic, Only To Be Turned Back

He started saving money and then, at age 15, he went to Damascus airport and bought a ticket to Libya, another country where there is conflict. There, he paid a smuggler to board a boat, but they were intercepted just a few miles off shore by the Libyan coast guard. The coast guard is supported by the EU to stop this migration, and is notoriously violent .

Migrants Captured In Libya Say They End Up Sold As Slaves

"They began shooting at us around the boat," he remembers. He says a coast guard ship rammed into them so hard he thought they were trying to capsize the boat.

Eventually brought back to shore, the migrants were placed in a detention center in Libya. He says the guards there beat him repeatedly, demanding he give them his dollars even though he had none.

"It's as if the police officer thought if he hit me a lot I would make a dollar out of nothing," he says.

People rescued from boats in distress on the Mediterranean rest on the deck of the Geo Barents, as the rescue ship heads to Salerno, Italy, the port assigned by Italian authorities for the migrants to disembark. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

People rescued from boats in distress on the Mediterranean rest on the deck of the Geo Barents, as the rescue ship heads to Salerno, Italy, the port assigned by Italian authorities for the migrants to disembark.

The boy says he lived on scraps of food. The drinking water was salty. And when he fell ill, there was no doctor. Despite being so young, he says, "no one was kind."

Sometimes he used his language skills to help the Arabic-speaking guards communicate with English-speaking African migrants. In exchange, he says, the guards would occasionally let him call home.

When he was finally freed, his family begged him to return to Damascus. "My mother was crying every day," he says.

"I thought about going back to Syria. But I knew that if I went back, I would lose my future, and my family's future," he says.

So he tried to head to Europe again, this time through a smuggler on a different part of the Libyan coast. But the coast guard stopped that boat, too, and he was thrown back into detention. He tried again, this time on a journey that involved walking for days across the Libyan desert.

In the year he spent in Libya, he was thrown into detention four times. This attempt to cross was his fifth.

For two Syrian war widows, a desperate attempt to reach Europe

Also on the MV Geo Barents are Aya and Reem al-Sakr, cousins from Syria who've shown this same determination. They're making this journey with Aya's four children, all aged between 6 years and just 10 months old. Reem says they decided to leave Syria after both their husbands were killed in the war. Aya was pregnant at the time.

The women sold their homes and jewelry. Three months after Aya's baby was born, they flew to Libya. They spent six months in a rented apartment searching for a smuggler to take them to Europe.

A rescue worker assists a Syrian family as they disembark from an inflatable boat. The family traveled with 158 other people on a wooden vessel that departed from Zawiya, Libya, at 8 p.m. the night before. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

A rescue worker assists a Syrian family as they disembark from an inflatable boat. The family traveled with 158 other people on a wooden vessel that departed from Zawiya, Libya, at 8 p.m. the night before.

Members of the Doctors Without Border rescue crew welcome Aya and Reem al-Sakr and the children onboard the ship. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

Members of the Doctors Without Border rescue crew welcome Aya and Reem al-Sakr and the children onboard the ship.

At one point, Aya says, they and other Syrians were kidnapped for ransom by a Libyan minibus driver and his friends. "They demanded money from us or said they'd kill us," Reem says. "They beat the men, said awful things to the women, and scared the children with weapons."

When the kidnappers told Reem to call a relative who could pay a ransom, she took a huge risk and called the Libyan police instead. And in this case the authorities intervened to force the kidnappers to release them.

After the women were freed, they made their first attempt to cross to Europe. Crammed into a small wooden boat with other migrants, they weren't allowed to take much with them. But they did bring a small audio speaker, shaped like a disco ball that flashes bright lights. They let the children play with it to try to distract them from the sea crossing.

"On the boat, there was dizziness and vomiting and fatigue," says Aya. "The children were sick, too. It was hot in the day and cold at night."

Libya's coast guard turned them back.

The rescue on the MV Geo Barents was during their second attempt.

As darkness fell that first night at sea, the engine cut out.

The 16-year-old Syrian boy was on the same boat. "We were thinking, if we were yelling or screaming, who will hear us?" he says. And then they saw the MV Geo Barents rescue ship.

A Syrian family is brought to safety by an MSF rescue raft after being rescued Oct. 6 after a night spent in darkness on a crowded boat in the Mediterranean Sea. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

A Syrian family is brought to safety by an MSF rescue raft after being rescued Oct. 6 after a night spent in darkness on a crowded boat in the Mediterranean Sea.

The MSF rescue team approaches a wooden boat carrying 96 migrants, mainly from Syria, Egypt, Bangladesh and Sudan. They had left the previous day from the port of Tripoli, Libya. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

The MSF rescue team approaches a wooden boat carrying 96 migrants, mainly from Syria, Egypt, Bangladesh and Sudan. They had left the previous day from the port of Tripoli, Libya.

Rescuers continue their work as Europe turns increasingly unwelcoming

Italy's right-wing government and other European politicians have vilified humanitarian groups that perform rescues at sea, accusing them of running a migrant " taxi service " that encourages more to attempt the sea crossing.

Humanitarian groups say their ships rescued about 8% of the migrants who end up reaching Italy. Many others are rescued by commercial fishing vessels or the coast guards of Italy and other nearby countries.

Nonetheless, public anger has mounted against humanitarian operations like MSF's. One rescuer on the MV Geo Barents preferred not to give their name in an interview, fearing a backlash against them and their family from their community in the Netherlands over the rescues they perform at sea.

Italy's regulations on charities keep migrant rescue ships from the Mediterranean

Last year, Italy adopted new regulations requiring humanitarian ships to return to shore immediately after a rescue rather than try to make multiple rescues. The Italian government also began assigning what port a rescue ship can dock at, which is sometimes located several days of navigation from the rescue site. MSF says these changes have cut by almost by half the number of migrant sea rescues it can perform.

Italian authorities have impounded over a dozen migrant rescue ships, alleging their humanitarian group crews broke the rules.

On this voyage, MSF learned of other smugglers' boats in distress. The crew wanted to reroute their journey to rescue those migrants, but were ordered to stay on course and return to port by Italian authorities.

Landing in Europe brings more challenges

The night before docking in Italy, Aya and Reem al-Sakr play music on the children's disco ball speaker, and the other women on deck ululate and dance in celebration of their imminent arrival.

The next day, at the port of Salerno, the migrants are met by Italian authorities and the Italian Red Cross and taken to a government processing center. They hope this is the start of a new life.

But just a few hours later, some 100 of them find themselves back out on the street.

They're left outside the gates of the government building, in an industrial area miles outside of town, without help. And they hold Italian deportation orders issued by the Salerno authorities.

As for the rest of the migrants rescued from the ship that day, it isn't clear what became of most of them. Some might enter Italy's years-long asylum process. Others, preferring not to remain in Italy, might turn down asylum or risk onward journeys without documentation.

The next day, NPR finds the migrants who were issued deportation orders gathered outside a train station after they'd walked into town. Some spent the night sleeping near the railway tracks and many of the men looked lost and in shock.

Despite Aegean Rescuers' Best Efforts, Not All Migrants Are Saved

The deportation documents claim they have opted not to request asylum in Italy. But many say they didn't understand what the authorities were offering them. They say there wasn't a proper translation. And now with this expulsion order, they risk being deported to their home countries or placed in a detention center in Italy.

"Many tell me they don't understand why they've been issued with this paper," says Rev. Don Antonio Romano, a priest with the Catholic charity Caritas, who has arrived to help them. The Caritas volunteers bring the migrants to talk to a lawyer, who begins the lengthy process of helping them appeal the deportation orders.

The three migrants NPR spoke with aboard the MV Geo Barents were not among this group.

The bright Syrian boy vanished into Europe. He had said he would try to reach relatives in Ireland.

Aya al-Sakr with her four children. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

Aya al-Sakr with her four children.

Migrants rescued by Doctors Without Borders observe police officers waiting on the dock at the port of Salerno, Italy. Valerio Muscella for NPR hide caption

Migrants rescued by Doctors Without Borders observe police officers waiting on the dock at the port of Salerno, Italy.

Aya al-Sakr and her children, and her cousin Reem, were brought to a reception center in Italy to process a claim for asylum. But then they slipped away on northbound trains to join family in other parts of Europe.

In December, NPR reached Aya al-Sakr by phone. She and the children made it to Germany, where her parents are already living. She says there were tears of joy as they met their four grandchildren for the first time.

She claimed asylum there, and she and the children are now living in a government center while their papers are processed.

Her cousin, Reem, pressed on to reach a loved one in the United Kingdom — a journey that involved another smuggler's boat, this time across the English Channel.

Aya doesn't know how long she'll be living in the government center in Germany while her papers are processed — maybe over a year. It can be hard living there, looking after the four children alone, she says. But at least she's brought them to safety.

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They knew the boat could sink. Boarding it didn’t feel like a choice.

The story of how as many as 750 migrants came to board a rickety blue fishing trawler and end up in one of the Mediterranean’s deadliest shipwrecks is bigger than any one of the victims. But for everyone, it started somewhere, and for Thaer Khalid al-Rahal it started with cancer.

The leukemia diagnosis for his youngest son, 4-year-old Khalid , came early last year. The family had been living in a Jordanian refugee camp for a decade, waiting for official resettlement after fleeing Syria’s bitter war, and doctors said the United Nations’ refugee agency could help cover treatment costs. But agency funds dwindled and the child’s case worsened. When doctors said Khalid needed a bone-marrow transplant, the father confided in relatives that waiting to relocate through official channels was no longer an option. He needed to get to Europe to earn money and save his son.

“Thaer thought he didn’t have a choice,” said his cousin, Abdulrahman Yousif al-Rahal, reached by phone in the Jordanian refugee camp of Zaatari.

In Egypt, the journey for Mohamed Abdelnasser, 27, started with a creeping realization that his carpentry work could not earn enough to support his wife and two sons.

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For Matloob Hussain, 42, it began the day his Greek residency renewal was rejected, sending him back to Pakistan, where his salary helped put food on the table for 20 extended family members amid a crippling economic crisis.

“Europe doesn’t understand,” said his brother Adiil Hussain, interviewed in Greece where they had lived together. “We don’t leave because we want to. There is simply nothing for us in Pakistan.”

At least 79 dead, hundreds missing in year’s deadliest wreck off Greece

On Matloob’s earlier journey to Europe, he had been so scared of the water that he kept his eyes closed the whole time. This time, the smugglers promised him they would take him to Italy. They said they would use “a good boat.”

The trawler left from the Libyan port city of Tobruk on June 9. Just 104 survivors have reached the Greek mainland. Eighty-two bodies have been recovered, and hundreds more have been swallowed by the sea.

As the Mediterranean became a stage for tragedy on June 14, a billionaire and several businessmen were preparing for their own voyage in the North Atlantic. The disappearance of their submersible as it dove toward the wreckage of the Titanic sparked a no-expenses-spared search-and-rescue mission and rolling headlines . The ship packed with refugees and migrants did not.

In missing submersible and migrant disaster, a tale of two Pakistans

About half the passengers are believed to have been from Pakistan. The country’s interior minister said Friday that an estimated 350 Pakistanis were on board , and that many may have died. Of the survivors from the boat, 47 are Syrian, 43 Egyptian, 12 Pakistani and two Palestinian.

Some of the people on the trawler were escaping war. Many were family breadwinners, putting their own lives on the line to help others back home. Some were children. A list of the missing from two towns in the Nile Delta carries 43 names. Almost half of them are under 18 years old.

This account of what pushed them to risk a notoriously dangerous crossing is based on interviews with survivors in Greece and relatives of the dead in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt, as the news sent ripples of distress throughout communities from North Africa to South Asia. Some people spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they feared being drawn into government crackdowns on human smuggling networks.

Rahal’s family said they do not know how he contacted the smugglers in Libya, but remember watching as he creased under the fatigue and shame of having to ask anyone he could for the thousands of dollars they were requesting for safe passage to Italy.

Greek and E.U. policies under scrutiny after devastating shipwreck

Thirteen men left from El Na’amna village, south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, in the hope of achieving the same. Ten miles away in Ibrash, another village, Abdelnasser left the house as he usually did for his 2 a.m. factory shift but joined a packed car to Libya instead, along with 29 other young men and boys. “He told us nothing,” said his father, Amr. “We would have stopped him.”

Many of the families said the departures caught them by surprise and that local intermediaries working for the smugglers later communicated with relatives in Egypt to gather the requested funds.

In El Na’amna, several people said the figure was $4,500 per person — a sum impossibly high for most rural Egyptians. In Ibrash, Abdelnasser’s uncle said, two of the delegates who arrived to collect the money were disguised in women’s dress. Another woman did the talking. She collected the money, photographed receipts, and then told the family that the deal was done.

‘He said the boat was very bad’

The time spent waiting in Libya was harder than the migrants expected, said family members who spoke with them throughout that period. The port city of Tobruk had become a transit hub for people, and the migrants reported that the smugglers treated them like goods to be traded. The lucky ones rented cramped apartments where they could wait near the bright blue sea.

Travelers who had arranged to meet their intermediaries in the city of Benghazi were transported in large refrigerator trucks to the desert. One survivor described a house there “with a big yard and big walls and people at the door with guns.” It was so busy that people slept in the yard outside. Inside, a 24-year-old Pakistani migrant, Bilal Hassan, tried to lighten the mood by reciting Punjabi poetry. He is smiling in the video he sent his family, but other men in the room look tense.

Some migrants told their families they were getting anxious and didn’t trust their smugglers. Others sent brief messages to reassure and say that they were fine.

Rahal spoke to his wife, Nermin, every day. A month passed with no news of onward passage and his mood darkened. He worried about Khalid. In Jordan, the boy kept asking when he would see his father again. “I don’t know,” Rahal texted in reply. When one smuggler’s offer fell through, he found another who promised to get the job done faster. In voice messages to his cousin, he sounded tired.

“I’ll manage to get the money,” he said.

His last call to his wife was June 8. Men from the smuggling network were yelling at the migrants to pack together as closely as possible in rubber dinghies that would take them to the trawler. Up ahead, the blue fishing boat looked like it was already full.

Matloob Hussein, the Pakistani who had lived in Greece, called his brother from the trawler. “He said the boat was very bad,” Adiil recounted. “He said they had loaded people on the boat like cattle. He said he was below deck and that he preferred it so he didn’t have to see that he was surrounded by water.”

When Adiil asked why his brother hadn’t refused to board, Matloob said the smugglers had guns and knives. As the boat pulled out of Tobruk’s concrete port, he told Adiil he was turning his phone off — he did not expect to have a signal again until they arrived.

After the calls to loved ones stopped, from the foothills of Kashmir to the villages of the Nile Delta, families held their breath.

It felt, said one relative, like a film that had just stopped halfway through.

In hometowns and villages, waiting for news

News of the blue trawler’s capsize trickled out on the morning of June 14. The coast guard’s initial report said that at least 17 people had drowned while noting that more than 100 had been saved. On the Greek mainland, relatives waited for updates in the baking sun outside a migrant reception center. Back in hometowns and villages, some people kept their cellphones plugged into the power sockets so they did not risk missing a call.

The residents of El Na’amna and Ibrash didn’t know what to do. Police arrested a local smuggler but provided no updates on the whereabouts of the missing. Rumors swirled that most were dead. The mother of 23-year-old Amr Elsayed described a grief so full that she felt as if she were burning.

A Pakistani community leader in Greece, Javed Aslam, said he was in direct contact with more than 200 families asking for news. Accounts from survivors suggested that almost all the Pakistani passengers, along with many women and children, had been stuck on the lower levels of the boat as it went down.

Adiil came looking for his brother. He was turned away from the hospital where survivors had been treated, but left his details anyway. Outside the Malakasa reception center, where the survivors were staying, 15 miles north of Athens, several Pakistanis seemed to know Matloob as “the man in the yellow T-shirt.” No one had seen him since the wreck.

Perhaps it was crazy, Adiil said Thursday, but somehow he still had hope. He had registered his DNA with the local authorities and he had spoken to other families there every day. Now he didn’t know what to do with himself. His eyes were red from crying. He carried creased photographs of his brother in his pocket.

In one image, Matloob is standing with his dark-eyed daughter, 10-year-old Arfa. Adiil had told the girl that her father was in the hospital, but that fiction was weighing more on him by the day as she kept asking why they couldn’t speak.

Khalid had been asking for his father, too, but no one knew how to make a 4-year-old understand something they barely understood themselves.

Nermin, relatives said, was “in bad shape.” She had a funeral to organize without a body. But first she had to take Khalid to the hospital for his biopsy, to learn how far the cancer had spread.

Loveluck reported from London, Labropoulou from Athens, O’Grady and Mahfouz from Cairo and Noack from Paris. Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, Claire Parker in Washington, Imogen Piper in London and Mustafa Salim in Baghdad contributed to this report.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the trawler left the Libyan port city of Tobruk on June 8. It left a few hours later on June 9. The article has been corrected.

Senegalese families mourning deaths of hundreds of young men trying to reach Europe

A fisherman turned smuggler told Sky News around 200 people in the area died trying to get to the Canary Islands, but demand is higher than ever.

Africa correspondent @YousraElbagir

Wednesday 15 May 2024 10:54, UK

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In a half-built home off the busy beaches of the fishing town Mbour, relatives and neighbours gather to grieve without a body to bury. 

A young woman walks in and greets each of us with a handshake and curtsy.

She turns to kneel at the feet of the man sitting in the centre room and suddenly, her posture collapses as she breaks into deep sobs. She was set to marry his youngest son, Mohamed.

Mohamed was one of at least 50 people who recently died attempting the dangerous Atlantic route from Senegal to the Canary Islands.

Their half-sunken boat was found 60 miles south of the Canary Island El Hierro on 29 April - none of their bodies were found in or around the wreckage.

"It was announced that there were only nine survivors in the Spanish hospital. When the survivors became conscious and they were asked - we knew Mohamed had died," says his father Oumar.

"I had decided to seal his marriage. That is why his fiancee was sobbing when she arrived - her hope was shattered."

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Three of Mohamed's older brothers are currently in Spain, struggling to live without residency permits. Oumar says two of them left from Senegal and one from Mauritania to the Canary Islands by boat over the last three years.

The Spanish non-profit organisation Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) says more than 6,600 migrants died on the Atlantic route last year as a record 55,618 migrants arrived in Spain by boat with most of them landing in the Canary Islands, according to Spain's Interior Ministry.

Despite the risks, the route is gaining popularity as the land journey to the Mediterranean Sea through North Africa has become increasingly militarised, with Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania in bilateral agreements with the European Union (EU) to stop migration.

In January, 7,270 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands - around the same number of arrivals there were in the first six months of last year.

Caminando Fronteras describes the Atlantic route as the deadliest and busiest migrant passage in the world.

Oumar is pained by the loss, but not shocked that Mohamed left to join his brothers. Life in fishing towns across Senegal has become unbearable.

"When I was younger and deep-sea fishing, I didn't face the problems we have now of industrial fishing boats and the big nets that they use.

"All of this has destroyed the sea. It is happening right now and here in our area and our sons are aware that there are no resources," says Oumar.

"This is the reason our sons are taking boats and leaving."

Illegal and unregulated fishing by large Chinese trawlers and Senegal's long-standing EU fisheries partnership are at the heart of discontent around the depletion of fish stocks and the devastation of artisanal fishing communities.

Under the current agreement, the EU pays the Senegalese state €2.6m (£2.2m) a year to allow 45 European vessels from Spain and France to fish 10,000 tonnes of tuna and 1,750 tonnes of hake.

"The issues with the fishing agreement, which started in the 1970s, is that almost all the areas that it applies to are exploited.

"These fishing agreements are not able to develop in a way to protect the fisheries - a renegotiation in a true way that can benefit these countries should be done," says Dr Aliou Ba, senior ocean campaign manager for Greenpeace Africa.

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Senegal's new president Bassirou Diomaye Faye has declared he will review fishing deals and licences signed with its partners that include the European Union to guarantee they are structured to benefit the fishing sector.

"This is a very good statement. There have been years of calls for the audit of the Senegalese industrial fleet. He also requested a renegotiation of this fishing agreement," says Dr Ba.

"It can be a real, fair fishing agreement. This can be a precedent of African countries defending the interest of communities, of the people."

But an alternate ecosystem of smugglers and young men eager to follow family and friends to Europe may have already been cemented.

On a beach an hour away from the government buildings of Dakar, a fisherman turned smuggler tells us around 200 people in the area died trying to get to the Canary Islands, but demand is higher than ever.

"In Senegal at this moment, we have no time to think too much because we have done so much thinking and don't have solutions. The only thing we see is to go to Europe."

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Soaring number of migrants trapped in Yemen face abuse and starvation, say NGOs

Urgent funding needed to help people return home as humanitarian crisis reaches critical levels, according to migration organisation

The number of African migrants stranded in Yemen , many of whom endure “horrifying and brutal” violence while trapped there, is reaching critical levels, according to international NGOs and civil society organisations based in the Arab state.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) put out a warning this week about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, leading a call for urgent funding to support the “safe and voluntary return of migrants to their countries of origin”.

The intervention follows a number of fatal boat journeys last month from Djibouti, a major transit point for people leaving the Horn of Africa, many of whom are attempting to get to Saudi Arabia – the Arab world’s largest economy and the world’s third most popular destination for migrants .

“As migration flows continue to surge, the demand for safe and dignified return options for migrants has reached critical levels,” said Matt Huber, IOM’s acting chief of mission in Yemen . The IOM estimated there were 308,000 migrants in the country.

Mohammed Al-Selwi, the executive director of Yemeni rights group Mwatana for Human Rights , said the vast majority of Africans arriving in Yemen regarded it as a transit stop, yet many ended up stranded there.

“Here, they are subjected to horrifying and brutal violations by the feuding parties dividing Yemen,” he said. “Forms of abuse include murder, mutilation, forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence.” Traffickers on both sides of Bab al-Mandab, the strait between Djibouti and Yemen, are accused of human rights violations.

Ayan Ahmed was 16 years old when fighting in Ethiopia’s northern state of Tigray broke out three years ago between the government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Her home town of Harar, 200 miles east of Addis Ababa, was far from the violence, but the impact still reached her: in a span of a year or so, she lost both parents to common illnesses which she said were fatal because the war had damaged the country’s health system, limiting access to treatment. She was then thrust into the care of relatives – all members of the Oromo tribe, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group but a target of discrimination .

Poverty, unrest and oppression meant the teenager was easily lured by smugglers’ promises of a better life in Saudi Arabia. Ahmed had no idea what awaited her on that journey.

When she arrived in Djibouti, eight smugglers – some of whom were from her tribe– “held us captives up a mountain in Tadjoura for three months, demanding ransom. These were the bleakest days of my life,” she said. “Food was given three times a week. We were beaten, terrorised, violated – some women were even raped.”

According to the IOM, the number of African immigrants arriving in Yemen by boat rose to 97,210 in 2023 , up from 73,233 in 2022 and 27,693 the year before, and closer to the 138,213 recorded arrivals in pre-Covid 2019. As new frontlines open and worsening economic woes add strain on African nations, more immigrants – the majority of whom are Ethiopians – are falling victim to traffickers.

It took Ahmed five months to get to Yemen, “where more abuse awaited us”, she told the Guardian. “I saw people die because of starvation and abuse by people who promised us safety.” Ahmed said she was spared the worst abuses because her brother sold some of their father’s land to pay the ransom demanded by the smugglers.

The now 19-year-old never made it to Saudi Arabia. “My niece and I were among dozens held up that mountain, who were put on a boat and sailed towards Bab-el-Mandeb for nine hours. Once we arrived in Yemen, we were abandoned to fend for ourselves. We navigated cluelessly for weeks between villages and towns, without any food or resources, until we made it to Aden,” she said.

After three years of saving up the 1,000 riyals (£210) for the journey, followed by months of abuse, Ahmed is now working in an Ethiopian restaurant in Aden, south Yemen, miles away from her Saudi dream.

Yemen was already one of the poorest countries in the world before a 10-year civil war gave rise to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with nearly 4.5 million internally displaced people and more than half its 33.7 million population in need of aid.

Nadia Hardman, a researcher at the Refugee and Migrants Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, said there had been “multiple cases of African women who have been impregnated as a result of rape they’ve endured while making the journey from the Horn of Africa to Yemen”, a path the IOM describes as “one of the most complex and dangerous maritime routes globally”.

For those who keep going towards Saudi Arabia, the risks are grave. Last year, Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers , including women and children, who tried to reach its soil between March 2022 and June 2023. According to the report, guards used explosive weapons to kill many migrants and shot others at close range.

This story is published in collaboration with Egab

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Coast Guard transports 26 people back to Cuba

by Nick Viviani

MIAMI, Fla. (CBS12) — More than two dozen migrants who were spotted earlier this week trying to reach the shores of the Florida Keys were taken back to Cuba on Friday, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) explained in a statement.

Guardsmen first noticed the small boat carrying 26 migrants Tuesday morning near Crocker Reef and safely helped them onto USCG boat, according to the military. The statement noted that when migrants are brought onto a cutter, they are given food, shelter, and medical attention.

On Friday, the Coast Guard Cutter Paul Clark departed for Cuba to take the migrants back to their home country.

The statement also pointed out that the Coast Guard, and its counterparts from Homeland Security, are maintaining their watch to curb people from trying to come to the U.S. illegally.

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While these individuals were repatriated, USCG 7th District Staff Attorney Lt. Cmdr. Tanner Stiehl noted that people who attempt to make the journey repeatedly could face more serious consequences.

“Repeated unlawful attempts to emigrate to the U.S. are subject to prosecution in addition to ineligibility for legal migration pathways," he added.

TAP with Coast Guards off Mediterranean… Hundreds of irregular migrants intercepted

16/05/2024 21:00, TUNIS/Tunisia

Tunis, May 16 ( TAP/Aymen Zemmali) - About 30 miles off the coast of Sfax (southeast), a National Guard vessel tried to take control of an irregular migrant boat, but the situation required a second speedboat to succeed in the mission.

A TAP team followed the pursuit of irregular migrant boats off the coast of Sfax at the end of the week, when it accompanied a patrol of the Coast Guard of the Central Region, which was on a mission to protect the country's maritime borders.

The migrants on board the metal boat tried to use pressure and confrontation to be left alone, threatening to throw two babies into the sea and throwing stones at the two boats, but the elite of the coastguard controlled the situation with great efficiency and professionalism.

Coastal patrol vessels belonging to the Central Region of the National Coast Guard return daily to the fishing port of Sfax with hundreds of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa on board, after thwarting their attempts to cross illegally into Italy on 'death boats'.

On Saturday afternoon, the vessel, accompanied by a TAP team, returned to port ahead of schedule. Its mission was supposed to last 48 hours, but the overcrowding accelerated its return.

The number of migrants on board the vessel reached 102 after the coastguard intercepted two illegal trips, the first on Friday night with 41 migrants and the second on Saturday afternoon with 61 migrants, including two infants and two women.

The migrants are lined up at the port under the supervision of National Guard land patrols before being transferred to buses.

1900 migrants in one night!

According to statistics obtained by TAP from informed sources who wished to remain anonymous, the coastguard teams managed to intercept 53 attempts at irregular migration to the Italian coast in one night.

The 'death boats' carried 1,900 migrants and chose to set sail during the last week of Ramadan in April.

In an exclusive interview with TAP, National Guard spokesman Houssem Eddine Jababli confirmed that in the first four months of this year alone, Guard units thwarted 21,500 attempts by irregular migrants to reach the Italian coast.

Opening the land borders and tolerating irregular sub-Saharan migrants will lead to a doubling of their numbers in a short period of time, he said.

Tunisia's location on the European coast makes it the gateway to Africa and the transit point to the northern shore of the Mediterranean, he pointed out.

Since 2016 and 2017, the influx of sub-Saharan migrants to Tunisia has increased significantly, he said, especially after the cancellation of visas.

He added that many of them arrive without identity documents, while Tunisian law imposes many controls on residence and passport law.

Tunisia is neither a country of settlement for migrants nor a country of transit," the National Guard spokesman insisted, adding that "if we open the sea borders, a large number of sub-Saharan migrants will flock to the country to try to migrate.

We are all Africans. We are dealing with humanitarian logic, but no one has the right to enter the country without a legal document.'

The journey for irregular migrants on rudimentary metal boats to the shores of Europe does not cost much.

The cost of the voyage is 30-40,000 dinars at the most, shared by 50 people, which is the average number of 'crossers' per trip.

This explains the frequency of repeated cases and the large number of trips recorded daily, members of the coastguard patrol told TAP.

Pounding waves, situation under control

Chasing operations, one of which the TAP team observed from the naval patrol boat, take place almost daily on the coasts of Sfax. A patrol does not return to port until it has been replaced by another, according to the ship's crew.

Meanwhile, on the "death boat", which is being battered by the waves, some of those on board are struggling to empty it of water, while others are trying to fend off attempts by the guards to stop them from continuing their journey, demanding that they be left alone in a state of convulsion and agitation.

The moment of the chase at sea, before the migrant boats were seized, led to violence against several members of the coastguard,' Jebabli said.

The migrants carried sacks of stones, various bladed weapons and Molotov cocktails to confront the National Guard forces guarding the maritime borders.

Seventeen crew members, including the captain, were able to control all those on the irregular voyage and get them on board.

After a period of anxiety and confusion among the migrants, calm was restored on board.

Disappointment and heartbreak were written on their faces after the journey ended a few hours before the dream was to be fulfilled.

The exhaustion of the migrants crowded in the front of the boat did not prevent them from insisting on being set free, chanting "let's continue our journey, let's go back to the sea...". Lampedusa, Lampedusa.

English: Samir Ben Romdhane

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Misan Harriman Makes His Mark As An Oscar-Nominated Director, Six Years After Picking Up A Camera For The First Time

Surreal. That’s how Misan Harriman describes his first time at the Academy Awards earlier this year. Six years before, his wife had bought him a Fujifilm X100 for his 40 th birthday and encouraged him to start taking pictures with it. Then there he was, surrounded by the global industry’s most overachieving, himself an Oscar-nominated director.

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Cinema quickly became his way of connecting to the world. He was obsessed with the cinematography of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon , to the point of delivering a school presentation on its use of light when he was 9 years old. “I became a cinephile without even really realizing it. And I guess it was because I was looking for the meaning behind all of the things that confused me about life. I found the answers in film.”

So, why did it take him so long to think it was something he might be able to do for a living? “Self-doubt and self-love are bedfellows,” he says. “I met a woman that fell in love with the parts of myself I was ashamed of and saw the boy in me that saw the world with wonder. She was the one who said, ‘That boy needs to express his point of view.’ I needed someone to love me a little bit to lead me to this journey.”

“You feel you can fail without fear of judgment. The top guys [on YouTube] make you feel insecure. They’re like jumping out of helicopters in Antarctica. But the smaller ones, they’re learning too, and they’re much more passionate about shooting than they are about being content producers.”

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And so, he went out and started shooting. “Fail, fail, fail, fail, and then fail again. I just kept tweaking my failures with help from my YouTube friends.”

Harriman’s work to this day is as focused on capturing everyday life as it was at the beginning. He would hit the streets of London and observe. Find slices of life in every frame he took. He took a trip to Rajasthan in India, “the most beautiful place in the world,” and aimed his lens at unusual things. “The photos were sh*t,” he laughs. “But I cherish those images as much as I do all these iconic shots people keep telling me I’ve taken, because they remind me that little failures can become big wins.”

The watershed moment for him came when Covid happened. 99% of his images, he estimates, he has taken since 2020. “It’s crazy, because it really wasn’t that long ago when you think about it.” He had been uploading his favorite shots to a little Instagram account he had maintained, but he never really saw a following.

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When George Floyd was killed in May of that year, and the Black Lives Matter movement led to global protests, the activist in Harriman was compelled to capture them. He went back out onto the streets of London to shoot a series of images of the protests and uploaded them to his Instagram account. Martin Luther King III came across them and reposted, leading to more reposts from a slew of celebrities. “I don’t think any of them knew they’d been taken in London,” Harriman says.

It could be suggested that his viral success was luck, but Harriman’s images captured the protests in a way that resonated precisely because he felt as passionately about the movement as the protesters did. He found stories he could tell within single frames because he understood those stories. By the time the then-editor of British Vogue, Edward Enninful, chose to use the magazine’s landmark September issue to celebrate activism, Harriman had become the only choice to photograph cover stars like Marcus Rashford and Adwoa Aboah. It made him the first Black person in the 104-year history of the magazine to shoot the cover of the September issue. “That’s how flipping, utterly crazy is my life,” Harriman says. “It’s been a wild journey since then.”

There isn’t a celebrity now who wouldn’t want Harriman to take their portrait, and he’s photographed many, including Angelina Jolie, Danielle Brooks, Salma Hayek Pinault, Spike Lee and Harrison Ford. On our next pages, he will share some of his favorite work, which includes shots of Liam Neeson and Kate Winslet. But, for Harriman, it is his work on activism that resonates strongest.

“When I’m dead and buried, my civil rights work is always going to be my most cherished work,” he says. “I know I’ve photographed a lot of famous people, but that is not as important to me as being on the tip of the spear for women’s rights, children’s rights, the queer and trans communities, climate change and race. If I’m hit by a car, I hope my children will say of me, ‘My daddy cared enough not to look away.’”

The short film that brought him his first Oscar nomination was The After , released last year by Netflix and starring David Oyelowo. It was a haunting portrait of grief that, Harriman says, may now be one of the most watched shorts in history thanks to the platform the streamer offered him. This move into the moving image feels inevitable when Harriman details his connection to cinema, and while he fully intends to move into features by telling the kinds of popular stories he grew up on, he is also fully invested in finding similar meaning in everything he does.

“I’m a big zombie guy,” he says, out of leftfield. “I was desperate to get the rights to [an English-language remake of] Train to Busan , but I was too late. But with all great zombie films, the monsters are never the zombies. I’m developing a vampire story right now, because I love the idea of immortality and the fleeting nature of love.” We’re drawn to these stories because they’re entertaining, but Harriman knows that the best of them teach us something about ourselves, too.

He is working on his first feature, a documentary with Paramount called Protest and Progress , which will explore the ways protest movements shape social change. “It’s like a character story of my life,” he says. “In a year that there are more elections than have ever been recorded, I’m traveling the world and pointing my lens, but also listening to who we are in the year of 2024.”

He shot some footage at the Oscars. “There’s some really interesting clips of the epitome of celebrity culture. What’s the opposite of that kind of echo chamber of privilege that we live in? Soon after the Oscars I went down to Lampedusa, off the coast of Sicily, where you can almost see Libya from the seafront. I was there speaking to migrants, the people crossing the sea on little boats. Paramount has given us real resources to observe who we are at a time when there is so much change happening. It feels like a very important piece of witness-bearing.”

He recalls the culture shock of standing by a graveside in Lampedusa so soon after slipping off his Oscar tux. “There are a few spots in this graveyard set aside for migrants, and of course they’re all nameless because we don’t even know their names. I was struck that one of these graves had loads of small plastic boats left on it, to represent how many had been lost at sea. The only remembrance of them is a little tiny plastic boat. It was a real reminder of the inequality of this existence we have. That’s why I do the work.”

He is determined that whatever success he achieves will be paid forward to marginalized voices. He is wary of what he calls “performative allyship,” in which institutions shore up their diversity requirements to avoid criticism rather than action real change. “As I get more agency, and a bigger platform, I will lift up as many voices who are being ignored for whatever reason as I can,” he says. “Not because it’s my job to, but I always will. As you climb, you lift. Always.”

His ultimate ambition? “To be one of the great filmmakers of my time,” he says, “or at least strive to be. I feel like I know what I could bring to this industry, and I want to spend the next 25 years trying to do it.

“I could fail miserably,” he adds, echoing the humble early days of his move into photography. “But I am definitely going to try.”

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