MASS DETENTIONS
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FORCED DISPLACEMENT
TARGET: BLACK PEOPLE

BANISHED TO THE DESERT

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Mass arrests and forced transfers: How migrants are exiled in North Africa with European money

An investigation by EL PAÍS with Lighthouse Reports reveals how Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia use European financing to detain and forcibly displace migrants and refugees. The victims are primarily Black people. The objective: prevent them from reaching Europe

It’s been more than four years, but Timothy Hucks’ blood boils every time he remembers it. In another country, what happened to this New Yorker in Morocco could be considered a kidnapping. In March of 2019, Hucks, who was then working as an English teacher in Rabat, had broken up with his girlfriend. Devastated, all he wanted to do was drink an entire bottle of wine. So, he left a quiche in the oven and his mobile phone on the table and headed out to a liquor store, which was just four minutes from his house. But he didn’t make it back: he ended up being arrested and exiled to a city more than 200 miles from the Moroccan capital. Next to him, there were dozens of young guys. And they all had something in common: they were Black.

Further south, in Mauritania, Idiatou and Bella begged their captors — members of the security forces — not to leave them in no-man’s land, without phones or money, because they wouldn’t know how to return or how to ask for help. But they ended up abandoned and barefoot at a border post between Mauritania and Mali, in an area where jihadist groups operate.

Meanwhile, François, a Cameroonian musician with a six-year-old child in his care, ended up suffering from hallucinations in the middle of a desert area in Tunisia. It took him nine days to get away. This was the first time that the local security forces had left him stranded in the middle of nowhere… but it wouldn’t be the last.

Every year, tens of thousands of people like Timothy, Idiatou, Bella or François (the last three have not given their last names for their safety) end up banished to desert areas or remote cities in North Africa. This is the punishment that migrants and refugees are subjected to when they attempt to reach Europe by boat or by jumping a fence. Thrown in some corner of the Sahara, the largest hot desert in the world, without phones, money, water, or even shoes, those who survive recount kidnappings, extortion, torture, sexual violence, or dog attacks incited by the security forces. This practice, which is systematically applied almost exclusively against Black people, has a silent accomplice: the European Union.

An investigation by EL PAÍS, in collaboration with the non-profit Lighthouse Reports organization and other foreign media outlets, has exhaustively documented how EU funds finance these operations in Morocco, Mauritania, and Tunisia.

Verified sites where migrants were abandoned

Rabat

Beni Mellal

MOROCCO

Tiznit

200 km

MAURITANIA

Nouadhibou

Nouakchott

Rosso

Gogui

200 km

Tunis

TUNISIA

Sfax

200 km

Verified sites where migrants were abandoned

Rabat

Beni Mellal

MOROCCO

Tiznit

200 km

MAURITANIA

Nouadhibou

Nouakchott

Rosso

Gogui

200 km

Tunis

TUNISIA

Sfax

200 km

Verified sites where migrants were abandoned

Tunis

Rabat

Beni Mellal

MAURITANIA

Sfax

TUNISIA

Nouadhibou

MOROCCO

Tiznit

Nouakchott

Rosso

Gogui

200 km

200 km

200 km

Verified sites where migrants were abandoned

Tunis

Rabat

Beni Mellal

TUNISIA

Sfax

MAURITANIA

Nuadibú

MOROCCO

Tiznit

Nuakchot

Rosso

Gogui

200 km

200 km

200 km

“When the European Union gives you money to block borders, you have to get rid of irregular migrants within your territory. Or, at least, [you need to] complicate their lives,” says a European source, who has worked on African programs financed by the EU. “If an immigrant from Guinea is in Morocco and you take him to the Sahara twice, the third time he will ask for voluntary return [to his country],” maintains this interlocutor, who requests anonymity for fear that the Moroccan authorities will make his work difficult.

Early evidence of these operations dates back to 2003, in Morocco. But over the years, such procedures have been systematized. Last summer, they could even be seen on TV: Black men, women and children appeared in front of cameras in no-man’s land between Tunisia and Libya. One photo of a woman and her daughter dying of dehydration in the sand circulated around the world.

Faced with such images, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson expressed her concern. She also stressed that “European money isn’t financing the deportation of immigrants. That’s totally false.”

However, for more than a year, this investigation has gathered evidence that shows not only that these operations have been well known in Brussels for years, but that they’re carried out thanks to the money, vehicles, equipment and intelligence provided by the EU.

Interviews with more than 50 survivors — as well as a dozen police officers and community sources — emphasize the routine violation of international conventions and treaties on human rights, discrimination and torture. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) are also aware of these practices, according to confidential documents that EL PAÍS has had access to. Since 2015, the EU has signed agreements with Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and, recently, with Mauritania and Egypt. All of the governments of these countries have been questioned for their deficiencies in respect for fundamental human rights.

Two Libyan border agents give water to a migrant of African descent in a desert area on the Tunisia-Libya border, in July 2023.
Two Libyan border agents give water to a migrant of African descent in a desert area on the Tunisia-Libya border, in July 2023.Hazem Turkia (Anadolu Agency/ Getty Images)

In the case of Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania, the EU has provided them with more than $400 million between 2015 and 2021 under the EU’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), intended exclusively to address the causes of irregular migration. Additionally, the 27 member states pay for dozens of other projects, but the lack of transparency in the financing system makes it impossible to verify how much money is spent and where. The three North African states are among those that receive the most economic support and are key in the European policy of border externalization.

The anti-irregular immigration practices of these countries are “public domain” in the EU, according to a source who worked on the design of the EUTF program in Morocco. In theory, local economies are bolstered, in order to discourage emigration. “These [detentions and forced transfers] have always been done,” says Gil Arias, who served as the deputy executive director of Frontex between 2006 and 2016.

The EU is obliged to ensure that the use of its funds doesn’t violate human rights. However, the European Commission has admitted in writing that it doesn’t monitor this requirement. In response to questions raised by this investigation, a spokesperson states that “all EU contracts have human rights clauses that allow implementation to be adjusted as necessary.” However, two senior European officials privately acknowledge that it’s “impossible” to control the uses of financing and equipment.

This strategy doesn’t seem to work. Irregular immigration continues to increase and has reached peaks not seen since the 2015 refugee crisis: more than 380,000 people irregularly entered the EU in 2023. That’s 17% more than the previous year, according to Frontex. At the same time, xenophobic sentiment in Europe has skyrocketed and immigration is key in the public debate ahead of the European elections in June. The extreme-right stands to win millions of votes at the cost of stoking fear against foreigners.

The persecution of Black people

The modus operandi is similar in all countries involved. The security forces in Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania arrest sub-Saharan immigrants in raids on the streets, in their homes, or on the boats with which they try to reach Europe. These individuals are subsequently piled onto buses and driven hundreds of miles away to remote areas.

New Yorker Timothy Hucks – who is African-American – left his house in Rabat without a cell phone and with 100 dirhams in his pocket, or about $10… enough to buy the bottle of wine with which he intended to forget his breakup. On the way, he met his roommate and announced that he would be back soon. But he never showed up.
“Bonjour! Bonjour!” is what Hucks heard behind him, while he was on his way to the liquor store. He didn’t turn around: he believed it was a beggar asking for alms. Then, suddenly, two plainclothes police officers grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and began to ask him questions: where he was from, where did he live, what passport did he have?
Hucks – who is now 33-years-old – showed them his New York driver's license. “We’re going to take you very far from here,” the men told him. Hucks – with his hands cuffed behind his back – ended up in a police station along with 40 other boys, some very young. “Children,” he recalls. “They were all Black.” While his roommate was looking for him, the agents questioned him. “They didn't ask me anything – they just accused me. ‘You’re a Boko Haram terrorist,’ they told me. And I was like: ‘What? I'm an English teacher!’ It’s difficult to describe exactly how angry I was.”
Hucks and the rest of the group were forced to board a bus. After several hours, they found themselves in Beni Mellal, one of the cities that Morocco uses as a dumping ground for immigrants. They were abandoned at the coach station more than 200 miles away from the capital.
Hucks only managed to return home the next morning. He found his desperate roommate and a burnt quiche in the oven.

In Morocco, it’s usually the Auxiliary Forces — the paramilitary wing of the state security forces — that patrol in search of people who fit a common profile: those who are Black.

When they see them, they’re forced into a van, often with violence. Other times, the Auxiliary Forces go door-to-door and abduct women and their children. Forced transfers are also very common with immigrants, who try to jump the fences of Ceuta and Melilla (autonomous Spanish cities on the North African coast), as was done en masse by the survivors of the Melilla massacre in June of 2022. The vast majority of the victims were Sudanese refugees. “These are isolated cities, outside the large population centers… sub-Saharan Black people are the perfect target,” explains a Spanish police source, who has experience working in Africa. This agent admits that he prefers to close his eyes to the abuse. “I can’t get involved in the atrocities they do in Morocco. I can’t fix the world by myself.”

Rabat: Play-by-play of an arrest and exile
October 18, 2023
The Moroccan Auxiliary Forces park their white vans on the street. In them, there are usually two uniformed officers who work with plainclothes agents. They walk, above all, through the streets of the Rabat districts most popular among sub-Saharan immigrants.
Agents chase migrants. They may simply grab them from behind and ask them to identify themselves without even explaining who they are. In this footage – recorded by this investigation – a plainclothes agent is seen in full pursuit.
Hours later, that same agent can be seen putting a Black man into the Auxiliary Forces van. Many people don’t understand what’s happening to them: they believe they’re being kidnapped. Those interviewed emphasize that any resistance provokes violence from the authorities.
In this case, as documented by this investigation, the vans take the migrants to a municipal building where – despite not being an official detention center – they’re held against their will.
Early in the evening, detainees are taken to a police station, where their fingerprints and photographs are taken. This police station is located just 500 feet from the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) in Rabat.
Between 10 p.m. and midnight, detainees are forced to board a commercial bus, surrounded by police cars and Auxiliary Forces vans.
The bus leaves with the emergency lights on. They usually head to cities hundreds of miles away. At least one unmarked car accompanies this bus.
Coaches drop people off along the highway, far from inhabited areas, or at bus stations. In this footage, you can see individuals being abandoned in Khouribga – about 120 miles from Rabat – in the middle of the night.
The next morning, one of the abandoned migrants said that he was detained while on his way to the offices of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to begin the procedures for his voluntary return to Guinea.

The most serious cases of violence by the Moroccan authorities collected by this investigation occurred near the border with Mauritania. Four Guinean survivors — one of them visibly and badly injured — explain how, upon entering Western Sahara (a territory occupied by Morocco) they were cornered by two groups of uniformed police officers. Some were on ATVs and others were accompanied by dogs. The young people claim that the agents took everything from them and that they were beaten and attacked by the dogs. After two hours of being held in a kind of field barracks alongside several dozen other prisoners, they were abandoned in the sand. Their hands and feet were tied up and they had no water, nor food. After managing to break their zip ties, they were able to get away from the deserted area.

“Some ran away after being released, without helping others. Others couldn’t even walk. Others were seriously injured by beatings and dog bites,” one of them says.

After such a traumatic experience, these Guineans want to return to their country. “No one can move on after the torture we experienced,” they tell EL PAÍS.

The government in Rabat says it thwarted 75,184 irregular immigration attempts last year, although only about 18,000 people were intercepted at sea or at the border, in a clear attempt to emigrate. These numbers don’t specify how many people were transferred to remote areas against their will. In Madrid, none of the agents interviewed believe these figures, which have been released by Moroccan government officials to demonstrate their supposed efficiency. However, these are the only official figures that are made public. In any case, it doesn’t seem to matter to the Spanish authorities, so long as Rabat contributes to reducing the number of irregular entries.

To this end, the EU finances part of the Moroccan operations against irregular immigration, on land and at sea. Spain, meanwhile, individually injects over $30 million annually into Morocco for police cooperation. The Auxiliary Forces and the Moroccan Gendarmerie — two of the security forces involved in the arrests and forced transfers — have received tens of millions of euros from Brussels. And some of the vehicles that Morocco uses for its migrant dispersal strategy are donated by the EU.

In 2022, the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP), the Spanish cooperation agency through which EU funds are channeled, announced the completion of the purchase of 130 Toyota vehicles to support the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior in its immigration control efforts. More than $8 million came out of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. 

Of all the vehicles sold by Toyota Du Maroc — to which the contract was awarded — only the Land Cruiser model was compatible with the dimensions specified in the tender. The vehicles in question also had to be metallic gray and have protective grilles. This allows them to be identified more easily in videos of the raids. Another 75 cars donated by Spain in 2018 have practically the same characteristics of the Land Cruiser.
In 2022, the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP), the Spanish cooperation agency through which EU funds are channeled, announced the completion of the purchase of 130 Toyota vehicles to support the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior in its immigration control efforts. More than $8 million came out of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. Of all the vehicles sold by Toyota Du Maroc — to which the contract was awarded — only the Land Cruiser model was compatible with the dimensions specified in the tender. The vehicles in question also had to be metallic gray and have protective grilles. This allows them to be identified more easily in videos of the raids. Another 75 cars donated by Spain in 2018 have practically the same characteristics of the Land Cruiser.

Brussels is well aware of the Moroccan government’s practices. In 2019, the European Commission warned of a “campaign” against “sub-Saharan refugees and asylum seekers” in the same report in which it justified the funds being given to Morocco. The authors wrote that several thousand people including women and children “have been illegally arrested and taken to isolated areas in the south of the country or near the border with Algeria.” In another document from Frontex, drafted in February of 2024, it’s noted that “racial discrimination and excessive use of force by police” are employed.

The Moroccan Ministry of the Interior denies human rights violations, although it doesn’t deny forced displacements. It maintains that national legislation provides for the “relocation of migrants to other cities” because it “takes them away from trafficking networks” and “dangerous areas, such as forests and deserts.” Exiles are, according to the Moroccan government, a way to give migrants “greater protection and respect for their dignity.” When asked if there are European or Spanish funds allocated to vehicles and personnel with which the expulsions are carried out, the Moroccan spokesperson issues no denial: “The technical support from Spain and the EU represents a minimal part of the costs assumed by our country.”

Locked up like animals

One day this past January, police officers — with their faces covered and Kalashnikovs in their hands — were guarding the Ksar Detention Center in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania. It was just over 100 degrees. Behind those walls, Idiatou and Bella — two Guinean women aged 23 and 27 respectively, who were rescued from a drifting canoe with which they intended to reach the Canary Islands — desperately awaited their fate. The images and videos obtained by this investigation show the conditions of the detention center: dark rooms without furniture, except for metal beds or bunk beds that sometimes don’t even have mattresses. The inmates urinate in bottles. There, they are deprived of food, water, medical assistance and, of course, lawyers, according to testimonies from a dozen detainees and reports from several NGOs. Some even report attacks. Children are also imprisoned in this facility, as can be seen in dozens of images of the interior that EL PAÍS has had access to.

A day on guard in front of the Ksar Detention Center in Nouakchott
January 2024
Imagen 1 Timeline
10:00 a.m.

At least 45 people are locked up in the detention center awaiting deportation. Inside, the list of people to be sent to Gogui, Mauritania is being finalized.

Imagen 2 Timeline
1:30 p.m.

Detainees in the center await transfer. Like another group that left the night before, they will also be transferred to Gogui, on the border with Mali.

2:06 p.m.

A white bus leaves the detention center. It heads to a repair shop, about 650 feet away, to prepare for the long trip to Gogui. The driver pays for the tank to be filled and for the tires to be inspected.

Imagen 6 Timeline
3:00 p.m.

The police call the detainees, they believe that they will get back their cell phones, but this does not happen; they are only given their backpacks with the clothes they were wearing.

Imagen 7 Timeline
3:05 p.m.

The bus appears ready to leave the detention center. There are at least 13 women and two of them, Bella and Idiatou, will be sent to Gogui on the next trip.

Imagen 8 Timeline
4:40 p.m.

The white bus is ready and returns from the repair shop to the detention center.

4:55 p.m.

A blue van full of migrants – who have been rescued after two weeks lost at sea – enters the detention center. The bus that was in the repair shop follows.

5:00 p.m.

A blue truck full of migrants enters the Ksar Detention Center. These detained individuals are also part of the group rescued at sea.

5:05 p.m.

The same blue truck – now empty – leaves the location.

6:00 p.m.

The white bus leaves in the direction of Gogui. At the same moment, a second truck full of migrants enters the detention center.

6:05 p.m.

EL PAÍS follows the bus for 10 miles along National Highway 3 towards Gogui. Inside are Bella and Idiatou. Meanwhile, two other minibuses leave the center with the migrants rescued at sea, who arrived just an hour earlier. They are of Senegalese, Malian, Guinean and Ivorian nationality.

7:03 p.m.

Another blue minibus full of people enters the site.

7:06 p.m.

The minibus – now empty – leaves the site.

What happens in these prisons for migrants and refugees isn’t unusual for the European authorities. For instance, journalists on the ground have identified Spanish agents visiting these facilities in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. In these centers, the authorities prepare lists of detainees who will later be deported. They share these names with the police, according to a source with access to these buildings.

Bella comes from Koubia, a town in the northwest of Guinea-Conakry. At 16, she was married to a man much older than her, who beat her day and night. When her husband died, she left her three children with her brother and decided to emigrate to Mauritania, to make a living for herself. She met Idiatou selling coconuts in Nouakchott and, together, they decided to undertake the journey to the Canary Islands, one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world, to start a new life in Europe.

After their rescue from the sea, the two women — who say they had Mauritanian residence permits — spent four days locked up in two different detention centers. “The police behaved very badly with us. They had no mercy,” Idiatou recalls. They were eventually put on a bus with 20 other people against their will. The journey, which was nearly 600 miles, concluded 12 hours later at the Gogui Zemmal border post. This is on the border with war-torn Mali, a country that’s foreign to them. Since 2019, the UNHCR has asked that nobody be returned to Mali. The other place where migrants are sent is Rosso, on the border with Senegal, about 120 miles from Nouakchott.

Mauritanian authorities have been arresting migrants since 2006 and then abandoning them on the border with Mali, according to a report by Amnesty International. And they don’t do it alone. The Spanish security forces have been collaborating with them in immigration control for a decade. Part of the activities against irregular immigration in Mauritania are paid for with Spanish funds.

The Ministry of the Interior provides $10 million annually in subsidies for police cooperation, while the Spanish Civil Guard and the National Police work side by side with their Mauritanian colleagues. Spanish agents provide information that allows local security forces to board boats in their attempt to reach the Canary Islands or arrest people on the streets, on the beach, or in shelters where they await boarding.

The money also comes from EU funds. European authorities finance, train and equip the Mauritanian police, mainly through FIIAPP. This Spanish agency has also financed two detention centers, one in Nouadhibou and another in Nouakchott. In addition, the Mauritanian police have several types of vehicles with which they detain and transport migrants to the centers, or to the border. Some coincide with those provided by Spain and the EU through the FIIAPP, as can be seen from the purchase contracts that this investigation has had access to.

The Toyota Hilux SUVs that Mauritanian agents use to arrest migrants match the technical characteristics of nine vehicles that the Spanish Ministry of the Interior donated to Mauritania in 2018. These Toyotas have also been recorded entering and leaving detention centers.
The Toyota Hilux SUVs that Mauritanian agents use to arrest migrants match the technical characteristics of nine vehicles that the Spanish Ministry of the Interior donated to Mauritania in 2018. These Toyotas have also been recorded entering and leaving detention centers.
The Land Cruiser vans that enter the detention centers in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou — loaded down with migrants — match the technical characteristics of the eight supplied to the Mauritanian Gendarmerie in 2020 by the FIIAPP, the Spanish cooperation agency with which the EU channels the funds it earmarks for Africa.
The Land Cruiser vans that enter the detention centers in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou — loaded down with migrants — match the technical characteristics of the eight supplied to the Mauritanian Gendarmerie in 2020 by the FIIAPP, the Spanish cooperation agency with which the EU channels the funds it earmarks for Africa.

When asked about this by EL PAÍS, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior neither confirms nor denies that it has knowledge of the expulsions to the desert, nor of the use of vehicles acquired with Spanish funds in these operations. Nor does it respond to the role of Spanish agents in detention centers. The ministry states that there are 50 Spanish police officers and civil guards stationed in Mauritania to fight against human trafficking, “with full respect for the protection of the rights and freedoms of migrants.” The FIIAPP, meanwhile, assures EL PAÍS that the detention centers it’s renovating will improve care for detainees and that the Mauritanian authorities are ultimately responsible for how they use the donated materials. The institution maintains that its managers and the police officers who work on its programs “have never witnessed any actions by the Mauritanian police that have violated human rights.” The Mauritanian government acknowledges the expulsions “to the migrants’ countries of origin,” but maintains that this is a legal mechanism and that the entire process “strictly” respects international laws and conventions.

In November of 2023, a report from the European Parliament warned of “systematic and serious violations of human rights and ill-treatment,” as well as of “abusive expulsions” to Mali and Senegal. Despite this, aid to Mauritania is increasing. Last February, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen traveled together to Nouakchott to announce more than $500 million to develop the country’s economy and stop rafts from reaching the Canary Islands. It’s unclear how this money will be spent by the local authorities.

The irregular journeys to the Spanish islands, in any case, haven’t stopped. Between January 1 and May 15, 16,586 people arrived irregularly at the archipelago… 375% more than in the same period the previous year. The majority came from the coast of Mauritania.

When Idiatou and Bella got off the bus that took them to the Malian border, the agents forced them to cross. “They goaded us like animals,” Idiatou laments. They walked barefoot for four days, until they reached a town whose name they don’t remember. From there, a taxi driver took them to Kaolack, the Senegalese city where some of Idiatou’s relatives live. Exhausted, dirty and with a swollen body, her sister took awhile to recognize her.

The desert as a weapon

François, a 38-year-old Cameroonian with a passion for music, is one of those exiled by Tunisia. The Coast Guard intercepted his barge last September when he was trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, along with his wife and their six-year-old son. The patrol boat came too close and almost flipped them over. “They began to circle around us, with the engines going at maximum speed. I thought it was the end,” he recalls.

In this short film by EL PAÍS, François describes his one-year-long journey from Cameroon to reach Italy. He was ultimately intercepted by Tunisian authorities and placed in a detention center, before being abandoned in the desert. Video: OLIVIA LÓPEZ BUENO

The Tunisian government continues to deny these forcible transfers, despite the fact that they’ve even been broadcast on television. “Tunisia refuses to endanger human lives or exploit the vulnerability of people fleeing political, climatic and economic risks caused in part by Western countries,” a government spokesperson maintains. The only returns, he assures the media, are voluntary. However, between July of 2023 and May of this year, EL PAÍS has verified 13 other operations to drop off dozens of migrants in desert areas that border Libya and Algeria.

The violent campaign against sub-Saharan African immigrants was unleashed in Tunisia last year, after President Kais Saied claimed, in February of 2023, that the increase in migrants was part of a “criminal plan” designed to “change the demographic composition” of the country. His statements triggered a wave of racist attacks against Black Africans, including those with residence permits. Since last summer — and coinciding with the commitment by the EU to deliver almost $1 billion in cooperation funds, of which $105 million are earmarked to stop irregular immigration — street arrests and maritime interceptions have intensified.

Von der Leyen has referred to the pact with Tunisia as a “model for the future.” But since last June, at least 29 people, including women and children, have died in the desert after being abandoned on the border with Libya, according to a tally by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.

The vice president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, is one of the architects of the current European migration policy. In September of 2023, he gave assurances that the EU “doesn’t finance these practices in any way,” in reference to violent operations against migrants in Tunisia. However, links to donations from EU member states are recurrent. The Nissan Navara pickup trucks that the Tunisian police use for raids against migrants match the make and model of those donated by Italy and Germany. Additionally, Berlin spent more than $1 million between 2015 and 2023 to train more than 3,000 agents from the Tunisian National Guard and the General Directorate of Borders, protagonists in the execution of these operations. Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, meanwhile, have funded a training center for Tunisian border agents. The EU itself has recently provided the Tunisian Coast Guard — whose members intercept migrants before expelling them into the desert — with equipment such as mobile radar systems and thermal cameras to help them detect ships bound for Europe.

The German Ministry of the Interior confirms that the government is well aware of the practices of the Saied administration. “The German government has harshly and repeatedly criticized the transfer of refugees and migrants to the border area between Tunisia and Algeria in the summer of 2023,” a spokesperson tells this newspaper. Furthermore, they continue, the German government “has repeatedly made it clear to its Tunisian partners that cooperation in the field of migration and human rights must be respected.” The Italian government was briefer upon being queried by EL PAÍS: “No comment.”

The Nissan Navara pickups used by Tunisia to intercept and subsequently throw migrants into the desert match those donated by Italy and Germany. The Italian government has delivered 106 vehicles of this model to the Saied administration, according to the contracts obtained by this investigation. Germany donated 37 pickups in 2017.
The Nissan Navara pickups used by Tunisia to intercept and subsequently throw migrants into the desert match those donated by Italy and Germany. The Italian government has delivered 106 vehicles of this model to the Saied administration, according to the contracts obtained by this investigation. Germany donated 37 pickups in 2017.

The efforts of the EU and its African partners to discourage irregular immigration have led many of those interviewed for this report to abandon their objective. However, many others, such as François, maintain their goal in spite of everything: “I want to reach Europe, the United States, or Canada.” Still, he questions the situation. “Europe itself doesn’t want to do the dirty work alone. Why do they see sub-Saharans as trash? In 1,000 years, in 10,000 years, there will still be someone like me. Someone chasing their dreams, someone far from home, going somewhere.”

Credits:

Format and coordination: Brenda Valverde and Guiomar del Ser
Design and art: Fernando Hernández
Development: Carlos Muñoz
Video editing:  Olivia López Bueno, Julia Jiménez and Álvaro González
Infographics: Rodrigo Silva 
Translation: Avik Jain Chatlani

This investigation has been conducted by Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with EL PAÍS, Der Spiegel, The Washington Post, Le Monde, IrpiMedia, the German television channel ARD, the Moroccan newspaper Enass and the Tunisian online publication Inkyfada. The porCausa Foundation contributed by accessing the FIIAPP databases and contracts.

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