Mamadou landed in Spain on January 28, 19 years after he last left the country. He was one of the tens of thousands of Senegalese who landed in the Canary Islands during the so-called kayak crisis of 2006. But the European dream did not go well for him. “I lasted two years, but without papers, it was very difficult to find a job and I returned to Dakar,” he said this week, in the transit area of Terminal 4S of Madrid’s Barajas airport. Now 45, he made a stopover in Madrid before passing through El Salvador on his way to Nicaragua, with the ultimate goal of crossing the US border illegally. “I’m strong, I feel young enough to start again. I don’t think the route, or making a new life there, will be any harder than what I’ve already been through,” he laughs. Mamadou was surrounded by others. Near the bathrooms, 30 Africans (mostly Senegalese, with a few Moors) slept on cardboard placed on the floor, waiting for the same connecting flight that would leave the next day.
This scene has become a norm. “We have seen flights with up to 80 Senegalese. This was not the case before,” says an airport employee, who started noticing this growing increase in the number of Africans passing through since September. The airport has traditionally always been a place where almost no one pays attention to who is coming or going, where it is almost possible for someone to set up camp without attracting the attention of fellow travelers. But if you take a closer look, this new phenomenon becomes quite visible. Lately, it has become common to see large groups of young Africans in terminals, waiting to board their flight to visa-free Central American countries. When asked about their final destination, they tend to give the same answer: the plan is to take a bus or taxi to the Mexican border. Once in Mexico, they must survive the dangerous criminal ecosystem that makes its money from the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who try to enter the United States each year.
The number of Africans reaching the wall shielding the world’s highest GDP took off last year. On a route once dominated by Latin Americans, their incursion, the result of voyages starting on the other side of the Atlantic, has caught the attention of US authorities. The New York Times published a report a month ago that focused on how this route has developed in such a short time, fueled, among other factors, by growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe. Additionally, air travel with a stopover in Europe en route to Latin America is legal and, although more expensive, serves as an alternative to the incredibly dangerous canoe journey in the Canary Islands, where almost 40,000 migrants landed last year. Overland travel in the Americas also involves threats, but none are as well known as those across the Atlantic.
According to government statistics provided by The New York Times, the number of Africans detained at the U.S. border rose more than 300% from 13,406 during fiscal year 2022 to 58,462 during the same period in 2023. They came from Mauritania (15,263), Senegal (13,526) and Angola and Guinea-Bissau, both with 4,000 migrants each. They make up a small fraction of the 2.5 million migrants being intercepted, but the comparison becomes more dramatic when you look further back. In 2018, for example, only six Senegalese and one Mauritanian were intercepted at the US-Mexico border, according to US Border Patrol data. In those days it was a non-existent route.
The most recent change is that travel packages offered by travel agencies have started to include a stopover at Madrid-Barajas, one of the main airports connecting Latin America, with more than 50 million travelers a year. Previously, the stops were mainly in Turkey. Many immigrants take the plunge, motivated by social networks. TikTok, for example, is full of travel offers, animated route maps in five countries, images of Senegalese people on planes and videos, their expeditions through rainforests, carrying their backpacks.
The trip costs between $8,000 and $9,900, according to Associated Press estimates. That doesn’t count the extortion migrants encounter along the way. The main destination is Nicaragua, where entry requirements are relaxed and affordable, although travelers usually have to pass through Bogota or San Salvador, where since November Nayib Bukele’s government has charged Africans and Indians a visa-free entry. more than 1,000 euros under pressure from the United States to control the migration flow to its southern border. The trip to Nicaragua also avoids the dangerous passage through the Darien jungle which, controlled by armed groups, marks the border between Colombia and Panama.
That the Senegalese and the Moors are exploring this new route is no accident. The two nationalities are the protagonists of the migration route through the Canary Islands and, even if their countries are not suffering from armed conflict, there are many reasons to migrate. In Mauritania, the last country in the world to officially outlaw slavery – which happened in 1981 – its black population has denounced multiple abuses. 56.9% of the population lives in poverty and has limited access to education, health, quality of life and employment, according to official figures. In Senegal, in addition to economic problems and spiraling inflation, the political climate has become so dependent that opponents of the government are currently being persecuted that classes have been suspended at the country’s most important university, Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, in order to to spread. last year’s protests.
Relation to asylum
The emergence of this new migration route through Barajas helps to explain in part the dizzying increase in asylum requests at Madrid airport, a phenomenon that has caused an overcrowding of hundreds of asylum seekers and the intervention of judges, an ombudsman and the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate. The surge began this summer with Somali nationals, joined by Senegalese, Moroccans and Moors, among others. All of them, with a ticket to Latin America in hand.
Although no official figures are available on the path of applicants, there are two general profiles among the Africans in Barajas: those who take advantage of their stopover in Madrid to seek asylum, determined to try to remain in Spain; and those who want to make their way to the United States, but who for various reasons were unable to reach their destinations, and returned to Barajas. The latter group, once in Madrid with no choice but to return to their country of origin, applied for asylum. In January alone, 864 applications were registered at the airport, mainly from Senegal, according to police data.
After weeks of chaos and overcrowding, the situation is relatively more under control, with around 200 applicants waiting for their applications to be processed and to find out whether or not they will be allowed to stay in Spain. The flow has slowed, mainly due to the fact that Senegalese no longer have easy entry into Madrid. Although the Spanish government will impose transit visas on them on February 19, the Spanish embassy in Rabat has asked Morocco to proceed with this measure by preventing the boarding of all Senegalese who intend to stop in Spain without a Schengen entry visa. .
The latent
Abdoulaye is ashamed to cry, so he covers his face with his hands and cries silently. Sitting on the floor of the transit area of Madrid-Barajas Terminal 4, the young Senegalese, thin as a wire, hesitates to say what has upset him so much. It broke, just like that, without any warning. Finally, he takes a breath and, his eyes red, explains that he’s been lying on the same floor for seven days, with no easy access to food, no shower. that he was going with a group of friends to El Salvador to try to enter the United States illegally because he wanted to immigrate, but he never wanted to do it by canoe. Except, he couldn’t get on board, and next week, when he finally manages to get on a plane, he’ll have to undertake this dangerous and grueling journey alone.
The transit area of the satellite terminal of Barajas, where Mamadou also awaited his connection, is a picture of a migrant void. Here, some disembarking passengers go through the police checkpoint to claim their luggage, hurrying to get it so they don’t miss their next flight. For others it is purgatory. Not everyone who wants to get to Latin America makes it on the first try, and problems can arise that make the journey much longer than they would like. Airlines must verify a number of requirements before letting them fly, such as the fact that they have a return flight or that the numerous connections that await them are feasible. A common problem was paying the exorbitant fee imposed by El Salvador, the standard connecting airport for those wanting to reach Nicaragua, which airlines must charge in advance. “You can only pay by card, and that didn’t work for many of the people here,” explained a group of Senegalese last Sunday.
On Friday, in addition to Abdoulaye, three other Senegalese were waiting for their flight, plus two Indians and half a dozen Egyptians, although the passengers vary from day to day. For weeks now, they have been huddling in the quietest corridors, with blankets and cardboard. There is nowhere to buy food in this area, so they rely on the kindness and willingness of fellow travelers and workers who can pass between the transit area and the food. “If you come back, can you bring me some milk?” Abdoulaye asks.
Mamadou, for his part, sent EL PAÍS an audio message on WhatsApp on Saturday: “I’m in Mexico.”
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