A Dangerous Sea Journey Was Just the Start of One Migrant’s Ordeal

0:01Today on State of the World, a dangerous sea passage was just the start of one migrant's journey to Spain. You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories. Up close with her happening, I'm Christine Arismuth. The Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa have been the destination of tens of thousands of migrants over the past decade. The journey is long and dangerous. But as NPR's Miguel Macias reports, that ordeal is followed by many more challenges. He starts his story in the capital of the islands. I'm standing in front of a hotel. It's a blue, light blue, beautiful building.

0:46If you walk by this place, you'd probably think that it's like some kind of surfer hotel. That's what it was. Now the building has a different use.

0:57We're here in Las Palmas, and we're just between our offices and the place where asylum seekers are housed, called La Fabrica Hostel. That is Asma El Nomari, and she is a psychologist working with the charity SER, short for Spanish Help Center for Refugees. She works to help migrants adjust once they reach the Canary Islands.

1:20Asylum seekers, like those staying at this hostel, don't have permission to work for their first six months in the country, so they're just waiting. Some take Spanish classes.

1:32Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is one of the capitals of the Spanish archipelago. Migrants from West Africa, usually in small groups, hang out on the boardwalk, play basketball, or simply walk down the street. There's nothing for them to do but wait.

1:55Amara Drame was one of those migrants. He now lives in a low-income neighborhood of Seville, where it's very hot, he says jokingly. Tami is from Mali. He says he had to leave because of a local armed rebel group. They try to recruit young men to fight against the government in Mali. That's when his journey started. Long, dangerous, and unpredictable, as it is for so many. He travels first to Algeria in 2019. There he works in construction for eight months to save some money.

2:30Next step is Morocco. He goes to Nador, across the border from the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla. It's a crossing hub for migrants. If you set foot in Melilla, you can claim asylum, like on the Spanish mainland. In Nador, he lives in the woods, waiting to try to get over the fences and barbed wire to separate them from Melilla. Migrants often try to overwhelm guards by charging the frontier line, sometimes hundreds at a time. He fails. He's four years into his journey. He decides to try for the Canary Islands route. He boards on a so-called patera, a fishing boat, with another 53 migrants. Three women, two children, the rest all men.

3:18They spent three days at sea. Food and water ran out after one day. The boat was falling apart. One person died before they were found by the authorities. When Sea Rescue found us, it took us more than two hours to arrive to the Canary Islands. Which means that they were not close to their destination at all. Drama says that if they hadn't been found, they would have all died. It's a journey that many have attempted. Juan Carlos Lorenzo is the regional coordinator for the charity SEAR. The route was born in 1994 with the arrival of a boat with two people who came from the coast of Western Sahara.

3:55He says migrants first used the coast of Morocco or the disputed territory of Western Sahara to launch their vessels. That's about 60 miles away from the islands. But slowly the routes have changed due to the pressure of migration control at points of departure, So people started to leave from Mauritania about 500 miles away, Senegal about 900 miles away. That migration control Lorenzo mentions has been part of the Spanish government's strategy to curb migration to the Canary Islands for years. The European Union supports these efforts. It's in summary a two-point strategy. First, dissuade potential migrants by helping develop local economies in countries of origin such as Senegal and Mauritania.

4:40second and forced policies by patrolling the coast of these countries to stop vessels from attending the dangerous crossing. The situation on these vessels is extremely precarious. The usual is for them to run out of water and food in the first few days of the journey. And we are talking about migration routes that could take 7, 8, 10 days or even 15 days. Lorenzo says the combination of overcrowded vessels, the long exposure to the sun and the lack of supplies all can result in serious physical and mental damage. In the worst cases, all too often, migrants die during the journey. Lorenzo says he doesn't understand why successive Spanish governments and the European Union call the situation an emergency.

5:28And this represents a big contradiction. If this migration route has been open for 30 years, we are talking about a structural issue, not an emergency. So if we continue to treat it like an emergency, Our solutions are always going to be short-term solutions.

5:46Back with Asma El Nomari, the psychologist, we walk up to her offices where about a dozen SEAD employees and volunteers are working. Most of the migrants who arrived go through what we call the migration grief. El Nomari tells me that regardless of the trauma migrants might have experienced before they reach European soil, They also go through an emotional process when they arrive. And this is something often migrants don't expect to encounter. They don't really share with those back at home that there's going to be a shock, because in order to leave, you have to idealize. You have to tell yourself that the place where you're going is going to be paradise, a sort of El Dorado.

6:30But asylum seekers know that eventually they will be relocated to the Spanish mainland. So the dream doesn't die. That dreamed future moves to another place. They think, if I didn't find paradise here, maybe El Dorado will be at my next destination. So the dream stays alive. Amar Adrame is now working with a short-term contract in Seville, far from the Canary Islands. For him, that paradise El Nomadi talks about might consist of simply getting a steady job. So I can have some job security and also bring my mother and my sister from Mali, because things are not safe over there.

7:17I asked him about his father. Drame's father died when he was a kid at the hands of the same rebels who tried to recruit him years later.

7:33Drame tells me he's grateful to Spain for protecting his life and giving him an opportunity to earn a living. But for many migrants who reach Spain, paradise in the end may be harsh work on the strawberry fields of Andalusia or selling counterfeit goods on the streets of Madrid, Seville or Barcelona while being harassed by the police. Probably not a dream they imagined. Miguel Macias, NPR News, Seville, Spain.

8:03That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.