In 2024, the European Union (EU) signed bilateral agreements and memorandums with several Muslim-majority nations, including Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya, that contained financial agreements to curb migrant flow through border control and closure or violent action towards migrants if necessary. These agreements come as a result of a well-documented rise in anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe as thousands of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa have fled conflict and persecution in their homelands to establish a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean. Migrants, particularly those from Libya and Syria, are fleeing the violence of the ongoing war and factional power struggle, where they are vulnerable to extortion, violence, and other abuses by the government and armed groups. One individual interviewed had fled military service in Syria under al-Assad’s regime due to conflict with his oath as a medical professional–he, along with 125 other refugees, fled Syria to Europe for freedom from violent conflict since 2009, 4.48 million Syrian refugees have sought asylum in Europe.
With the increasing immigrant population, especially from Muslim countries, many white Europeans fear that low fertility rates among “European natives” will create a self-effacing Europe devoid of Western identity. Xenophobic political sentiment has begun to influence the EU and its agreements with North African countries, regions that groups such as Liberian migrants must traverse before attempting to cross the Mediterranean. These agreements have already dropped irregular border crossings by an overall 38%—the lowest level since 2021 (due to COVID-19)—though the West African route saw an 18% increase, the highest since data collection began in 2009. This means that while efforts have been made to close off points of crossing, immigrants are finding alternative routes and bypassing blocked routes.
In response to the increased migration across the Mediterranean, Tunisia and Italy have developed a coordinating strategy that integrates migration control with national identity and economic policies. Tunisia stated that the reason for their aggressive migration crackdown and policy development is a defense against migrants who threaten to transform the state into an “African” country rather than an “Arab-Muslim” one. EU nations such as Italy have pitched migration policy as a facet of plans to boost the economies of African countries directly involved with migrant flow into the EU. Last year, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen both presented plans with economic benefits in tandem with stricter migration policy. Leyen’s partnership package plan held over 1.08 billion dollars in assistance, with approximately 164.5 million dollars targeted towards border management.
This is not the first time agreements have been used to curb migration into the EU. In 2017, an EU summit in Malta saw the promise of greater funding for migrant containment and the closing of the Liberian and Tunisian Central Mediterranean migrant routes. This is the same route that experienced a 59% drop in crossings in 2024, according to Frontex. The EU’s concerted response differs greatly from those in 2015, alongside the growth of xenophobia and the election of far-right politicians. There is a fear that Europe is losing its Western identity, particularly from invading Arab populations who, from their perspective, terrorize the white European population. Germany had committed 6.6 billion dollars to support 800,000 migrants entering the country and take in 500,000 migrants a year, with Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly stating that the EU cannot fail on the matter of supporting refugees if they wished to remain “the Europe [they] wished for.”
These recent agreements have increased the expulsion of migrants in North Africa who sought to cross the Mediterranean, some even using brutal tactics, including documented human rights violations and imprisonment. As a result, migrants face threats of torture, sexual violence, starvation, serious injury, and death. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has now been denied access and obstructed from providing treatment to those individuals inside two of Libya’s major detention facilities after more than seven years of access, from 2016 to 2023. At one detention center, Abu Salim, women reported to MSF workers that they were told they could be released in exchange for sexual favors, and that they experienced sexual abuse at the hands of armed guards and men brought from outside the facility. Prisoners described being routinely denied life-saving medical treatment. In response to the exposed abuse, MSF has called for a stop to detention practices and the release of all those held, and for refugees to be provided with safe and legal pathways out of Libya.
Other countries, such as Tunisia, have begun a process known as “desert dumping,” abandoning migrants into the no-man’s land along their border in the Sahara Desert, providing them with no food or water and adequate medical care. Funded with more than 400 million euros by the EU Trust Fund under the pretense of migrant management, these operations use the funds to operate vehicles and commute out to remote regions of the Sahara to abandon migrants, according to a year-long investigation from Lighthouse Reports. Many who are left in the desert face threats of kidnapping, extortion, torture, violence, and death; others are sold and held for ransom. Vehicles used to round up migrants during raids and transport them to desert regions have been matched to vehicles donated to Tunisia by Italy and Germany. Some people, like African-American citizen Timothy Hucks, have been wrongfully arrested and subsequently abandoned in the desert following a police interrogation.
Of the 613 men arrested and sent back to Niger in December 2024, a majority reported mistreatment by authorities during their time in detention centers and while being transported. Few, including a 25-year-old from Guinea, are detained despite holding UNHCR refugee status papers. Those detained also include pregnant women and children; one group interviewed reported suffering hallucinations and heel infections. Many were dehydrated, injured, and abused by organized crime and trafficking rings that operate in the dumping zones. One group reportedly had been photographed by Spanish officers before knowingly being abandoned in an al-Qaeda-linked active war zone in the Malian desert.
Damaging migration policies from the EU and partnering African nations have resulted in the forceful return of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers to Libya and neighboring regions, where they face horrific and abusive conditions in detention centers and abandonment in the Sahara Desert. When groups are finally able to reach nearby cities, often the same from which they were rounded up, many risk being detained and dumped again, creating a cycle of violence and abuse. Using violent and abusive detainment as a solution to reduce migration will not reduce the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe, but rather force those desperate enough to create newer and potentially more dangerous routes to the EU and their assumed freedom from violent conflict. Scholars have long since connected this crisis to the colonial historical legacy left by many nations that participate in the prevention of African and Muslim migration into the EU. If the European Union is desperate to contain and prevent migrants at the cost of billion-dollar economic deals, it would be a greater use of funds to build instead grassroots support for democracy and peace-building efforts in regions of conflict.
