DAKAR: Traffickers in Niger are taking African migrants dreaming of reaching Europe on more dangerous routes through the Sahara desert in order to avoid detection after a government crackdown on smuggling, the UN migration agency said on Tuesday.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it had rescued 1,000 migrants since April in Niger’s desert north, a transit point to Libya, from where more than 600,000 people have set out on flimsy boats for Europe in the past four years.
Fewer smugglers are setting off from the Nigerien city of Agadez — a smuggling hub until the European Union last year bankrolled a clampdown — and are now taking more treacherous routes through the Sahara, far away from water sources and basic services, the IOM said.
“Smugglers are taking more risks to avoid major hubs, checkpoints and security controls,” Alberto Preato, program manager at the IOM in Niger, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
“But cars break down, drivers get lost and migrants get abandoned ... the conditions are dire,” he added. “Migrants say: ‘The desert is a larger cemetery than the Mediterranean’.”
Thousands of migrants have drowned attempting the sea crossing between Libya and Italy in recent years, yet no data exists for the number of deaths in the vast and unpoliced Sahara.
More migrants may die in the Sahara than in the Mediterranean, says migration tracking group 4mi. Dozens have died of thirst in Niger’s desert north in recent months, while hundreds of others have been rescued by authorities.
“Because the desert is so vast ... it is hard to know how many people are actually dying en route,” IOM spokeswoman Olivia Headon told a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “But it is definitely in the hundreds if not thousands.”
The IOM said it takes those rescued to transit centers, where they receive health care, counselling and assistance to return to their countries if they wish to.
The European Union and countries including Germany and Italy have promised the impoverished West African nation hundreds of millions of dollars to combat people smuggling, after at least 300,000 migrants crossed the desert from Niger to Libya in 2016.
That number has largely declined this year — only 60,000 people have entered Niger so far in 2017 — largely due to the EU-backed government crackdown, which has seen smugglers arrested and their vehicles seized, according to the IOM.
Niger smugglers take migrants on deadlier Saharan routes — UN
Niger smugglers take migrants on deadlier Saharan routes — UN
Second death in Minneapolis crackdown heaps pressure on Trump
- Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city
MINNEAPOLIS: The Trump administration faced intensifying pressure Sunday over its mass immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, after federal agents shot dead a second US citizen and graphic cell phone footage again contradicted officials’ immediate description of the incident.
Federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, early Saturday while scuffling with him on an icy roadway in the Midwestern city, less than three weeks after an immigration officer fired on Renee Good, also 37, killing her in her car.
President Donald Trump’s administration quickly claimed that Pretti had intended to harm the federal agents — as it did after Good’s death — pointing to a pistol it said was discovered on him.
However, video shared widely on social media and verified by US media showed Pretti never drawing a weapon, with agents firing around 10 shots at him seconds after he was sprayed in the face with chemical irritant and thrown to the ground.
The video further inflamed ongoing protests in Minneapolis against the presence of federal agents, with around 1,000 people participating in a demonstration Sunday.
After top officials described Pretti as an “assassin” who had assaulted the agents, Pretti’s parents issued a statement Saturday condemning the administration’s “sickening lies” about their son.
Asked Sunday what she would say to Pretti’s parents, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said: “Just that I’m grieved for them.”
“I truly am. I can’t even imagine losing a child,” she told Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.”
She said more clarity would come as an investigation progresses.
US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also said an investigation was necessary to get a full understanding of the killing.
Asked if agents had already removed the pistol from Pretti when they fired on him, Blanche said: “I do not know. And nobody else knows, either. That’s why we’re doing an investigation.”
‘Joint’ probe
Their comments came after multiple senators from Trump’s Republican Party called for a thorough probe into the killing, and for cooperation with local authorities.
“There must be a full joint federal and state investigation,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said.
The Trump administration controversially excluded local investigators from a probe into Good’s killing.
Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz posed a question directly to the president during a press briefing Sunday, asking: “What’s the plan, Donald Trump?“
“What do we need to do to get these federal agents out of our state?“
Thousands of federal immigration agents have been deployed to heavily Democratic Minneapolis for weeks, after conservative media reported on alleged fraud by Somali immigrants.
Trump has repeatedly amplified the racially tinged accusations, including on Sunday when he posted on his Truth Social platform: “Minnesota is a Criminal COVER UP of the massive Financial Fraud that has gone on!“
The city, known for its bitterly cold winters, has one of the country’s highest concentrations of Somali immigrants.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pushed back against Trump’s claim, telling reporters “it’s not about fraud, because if he sent people who understand forensic accounting, we’d be having a different conversation. But he’s sending armed masked men.”
Court order
Since “Operation Metro Surge” began, many residents have carried whistles to notify others of the presence of immigration agents, while sometimes violent skirmishes have broken out between the officers and protesters.
Local authorities have sued the federal government seeking a court order to suspend the operation, with a first hearing set for Monday.
Recent polling has shown voters increasingly upset with Trump’s domestic immigration operations, as videos of masked agents seizing people off sidewalks — including children — and dramatic stories of US citizens being detained proliferate.
Barack and Michelle Obama on Sunday forcefully condemned Pretti’s killing, saying in a statement it should be a “wake-up call” that core US values “are increasingly under assault.”
The former president and first lady blasted Trump and his government as seeming “eager to escalate the situation.”
