Tunisia rounding up migrants at sea in record numbers

800 have died trying to reach Europe this year

OFF THE COAST OF SFAX, Tunisia — A young man wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with “Dior,” women clutching babies wrapped in blankets, children bundled in winter coats. All gingerly stepped from rickety boats into the sturdy craft of the Tunisian Maritime National Guard — and away from their dreams of life in Europe.

Cold, wet, and heartbroken, they are among hundreds caught daily in overnight sweeps for migrant boats on the Mediterranean Sea.

“Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!” The shouted order confirmed that the people in the group were no longer in charge of their destiny. A woman sobbed.

On an overnight expedition with the National Guard last week, Associated Press reporters witnessed migrants pleading to continue their journeys to Italy in unseaworthy vessels, some taking on water. Over 14 hours, 372 people were plucked from the fragile boats.

Migrants, mainly from subSaharan Africa, are undertaking the perilous journey in unprecedented numbers. In the first three months of this year, 13,000 of them were forced from their boats off the eastern Tunisian port city of Sfax, the main launching point. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of migrants heading to Europe nearly doubled.

In a single day in March, a record 2,900 migrants were stopped in the Sfax region, the nearby coastal city of Mahdia, and the Kerkennah Islands, off the Sfax coast, National Guard Brigadier General Sabeur Younes said.

Migration to Europe has been on an upward climb, peaking in 2022 to 189,620, according to the International Organization for Migration. That’s the most since 2016, when close to 400,000 left their homelands, and one year after more than 1 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing war, sought refuge in 2015.

Each night, National Guard vessels comb the waters. Pulling out the dead is the grimmest part of the job. Already this year more than 800 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean, including nearly 300 just in the last 10 days.

The groups of people plucked from the water during numerous sorties by small crafts are collected on a waiting National Guard mother ship and returned to Sfax. Considered victims, not lawbreakers, those stopped en route are set free at the port, many to try again.