Senegalese hoping for better lives wait as ‘impossible’ route to US shuts

Published

10 months ago

May 16, 2024

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A popular passage used by thousands of Senegalese migrants to enter the US via flights to Nicaragua and a land route through Mexico has become practically “impossible”, a Senegalese man who made the trip has told Sky News.

Local authorities have banned travel agents from selling plane tickets from Dakar to Nicaragua. Airports in Casablanca and Madrid – key transit hubs for the route – imposed transit visas on Senegalese passport holders earlier this year.

The crackdown comes after US authorities arrested Senegalese migrants 20,231 times for crossing the border illegally from July to December.

That’s 10 times more arrests than in the last six months of 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

“There are some friends who ask how I did it, they were curious but didn’t have the money to make it,” a Senegalese man who made the journey in August 2023 tells us from his new home in the US.

“I put some of them in touch with the guy who helped me but some waited too long and now the route is closed.”

He says he spent 10 years’ worth of savings boosted by a loan from his sister to buy the £5,200 plane ticket to Nicaragua and pay £2,600 for smugglers taking them through Central America.

“It was very hard. I just got information from one of my friends that it was possible to attempt the US via Nicaragua and at that point I didn’t even have a passport,” he said.

He flew from Dakar to Casablanca to Madrid and after a 23-hour transit boarded a flight to Bogotá. From there, he flew to San Salvador and finally took a last flight to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.

After five flights, the difficult journey had only just begun.

‘Guys were celebrating… crying’

He boarded a bus from Nicaragua to Honduras and then to Mexico where smugglers transported them in pickup trucks and by foot to the US border.

He says he was robbed by gangsters multiple times as he traversed the tough terrain of rivers and mountains to make it to the fence.

“When they cut the fence and brought us across, guys were celebrating, crying and shouting. After that we had to walk for a long distance but we were too happy to feel it,” he said.

He spent two days at the border detention camp on the US-Mexico border before he was released.

It took him 18 days to make it and says that for others it can take a month. There is no doubt in his mind that he made the right choice, even as he waits for permanent status.

“Senegal is very hard – I went to university and have a masters degree. It is better [here in the US] than Senegal. What they pay here in one week is more than [what they pay] a month in Senegal,” he added.

Young men across Dakar are working to earn money in case a similar route to the US opens.

The journey through Nicaragua to the US is seen as a safer – albeit expensive – alternative to the deadly Atlantic route to the Canary Islands by fishing boat and the arduous land journey through North Africa to the Mediterranean Sea and then across to Italy.

For those who have survived those routes, the cost of trying and failing is much higher than the thousands of pounds needed to get to the US.

‘I thought slavery was finished’

Window-cleaner Issa, 32, says he was enslaved, tortured and detained in Libya before agreeing to return to Dakar.

He now organises a support group called Young Migrant Returnees that meet to work through the trauma they experienced in Libya and other corridor countries and raise awareness around the dangers.

“It was incredibly difficult – forced labour – we faced terrible things and we don’t want it to happen to friends and family,” he said.

“There were many of us and a lot of them died on the road. Some of them were imprisoned but we had a chance to come back to our country.”

He added: “I will never forget those memories. I thought that slavery was finished but from what I’ve experienced it’s still happening.”

Repelled from trying again via Libya and horrified by the hundreds of young men dying in the North Atlantic, they weigh up their options.

Issa’s brother was in Brazil when the Nicaragua route opened up and is now in the US.

“If someone presented us with an opportunity to leave, which is different to the Libya route, we will take it because we are living a hard life in Senegal,” he said.

“Even those who worked in factories – the pay cheque is not good.”

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Russia sticks to red lines on 30-day Ukraine ceasefire plan – as Zelenskyy attacks ‘manipulative’ Putin

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8 hours ago

March 14, 2025

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Russia sticks to red lines on 30-day Ukraine ceasefire plan - as Zelenskyy attacks 'manipulative' Putin

Vladimir Putin has said Russia agrees to an end to fighting in Ukraine, but “lots of questions” remain over proposals for a 30-day ceasefire.

Casting doubt over whether a deal can be agreed, the Russian president said a ceasefire must lead to “long-term peace” which “would remove the initial reasons for the crisis”.

Russia has previously said it would not accept Ukraine joining NATO and European peacekeepers in Ukraine.

Moscow has reportedly also presented a “list of demands” to the US to end the war, which would include international recognition of Russia’s claim to Crimea and four Ukrainian provinces.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Mr Putin’s remarks were “very predictable” and “very manipulative”, adding that the Russian president was preparing to reject the ceasefire proposal he agreed with the US.

Mr Putin’s comments came as Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow ahead of talks over Ukraine with the Russian president.

Ukraine war latest updates

Speaking on Thursday afternoon, Mr Putin described the situation in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have pushed into Moscow’s territory, as “completely under our control”.

It appeared the US had persuaded Ukraine to accept the ceasefire, he said, but Ukraine is also interested because of the battlefield situation, with its forces in Kursk fully blocked in the coming days.

“In these conditions, I believe it would be good for the Ukrainian side to secure a ceasefire for at least 30 days,” he said.

He also said there would need to be a mechanism to control possible breaches of the truce.

Another issue he raised was whether Ukraine could use the 30-day ceasefire to continue to mobilise and rearm.

He said he would need to speak to Mr Trump over the terms of any ceasefire.

Moscow’s maximalist position hasn’t changed

Vladimir Putin was never going to flat out reject the US proposal for a ceasefire, but he also wasn’t going to fully endorse it either. Russia’s agreement, as expected, comes with several strings attached.

The Kremlin leader didn’t specify Moscow’s demands but he did allude to them by saying that any peace deal had to eliminate the “root causes” of the conflict.

It’s become a frequent refrain of his, and shows that Moscow’s maximalist position hasn’t changed.

By “root causes”, the Russian president is referring to NATO’s eastward expansion, which he blames as the catalyst for the war in Ukraine.

It’s a very clear indication his agreement to a ceasefire relies on getting some kind of security guarantees of his own, for example a promise Ukraine will never join NATO, or that there’ll never be any European peacekeeping forces from NATO members based in the country in the future.

He also articulated why Moscow is reluctant to agree to an immediate truce, talking at length about his forces’ advances in Kursk region. Ukraine’s incursion there has been humiliating for the Kremlin, but their expulsion is finally within reach.

Mr Putin doesn’t want that opportunity to slip away. By pausing Russia’s offensive, he fears they’ll lose the advantage and give the enemy time to regroup.

Mr Putin was, however, careful to thank Donald Trump for his efforts in trying to reach a peace agreement, perhaps wary of any backlash from the White House. But despite that, he still doesn’t appear to be showing any sign of compromise.

Mr Putin was speaking alongside Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko and the pair said in a joint statement that NATO’s actions regarding the war in Ukraine were fraught with the risk of nuclear conflict.

The two countries also criticised the European Union’s policy towards Russia, labelling it aggressive and confrontational.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left thousands of people dead and injured, millions displaced and towns and cities reduced to rubble.

Moscow’s forces have been advancing since the middle of last year and now control nearly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.

In his speech Mr Putin said Russian forces were pushing forwards along the entire frontline.

Responding to the comments, Mr Zelenskyy said: “Putin, of course, is afraid to say directly to President Trump that he wants to continue this war, he wants to kill Ukrainians.”

He said Mr Putin’s words were “just another Russian manipulation”.

Mr Trump also responded to the remarks, saying Mr Putin’s statement was not complete and reiterated his willingness to talk to the Russian president, adding: “Hopefully Russia will do the right thing.”

In a news conference with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, the US president shifted his tone on the alliance, saying it was “stepping up” and praising Mr Rutte for doing “some really good work”.

Mr Rutte said NATO members needed to produce more weapons, stating the alliance was not doing enough and was lagging behind Russia and China.

It comes after Mr Putin donned a camouflage uniform to visit a command post in the Kursk region on Wednesday.

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Donald Trump says he thinks US will annex Greenland

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8 hours ago

March 14, 2025

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Donald Trump says he thinks US will annex Greenland

Donald Trump has said he thinks the US will annex Greenland, days after the country’s incoming prime minister said: “We don’t want to be Americans.”

During an Oval Office meeting with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, the US president was asked about his hopes to annex Greenland.

“I think that will happen,” he said. “I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man who could be very instrumental.

“You know Mark, we need that for international security. We have a lot of our favourite players cruising around the coast and we have to be careful.”

Mr Trump questioned Denmark’s claim to the autonomous territory, saying Denmark was “very far away” from Greenland despite being part of the country’s kingdom.

“A boat landed there 200 years ago or something. They say they have rights to it,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t think it is, actually.”

He said the US already has a military presence in Greenland and added: “Maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers going there.”

It comes after Greenland’s centre-right party won an election in a result seen as a rejection of Mr Trump’s interference in the island’s politics.

The Demokraatit party favours a slow move towards independence from Denmark – with its leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen telling Sky News on the eve of the election “we want to build our own country by ourselves”.

In his White House news briefing Mr Trump claimed the election result was very good for the US and said “the person who did the best is a very good person as far as we’re concerned”.

He previously promised “billions of dollars” in investment and told Greenlanders he would “make you rich”.

Mr Trump also reacted to Vladimir Putin’s remarks about Russia agreeing to an end in fighting in Ukraine, but adding “lots of questions” remain over proposals for a 30-day ceasefire.

The US president said his Russian counterpart’s statement was not complete and reiterated his willingness to talk to him, adding: “Hopefully Russia will do the right thing.”

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Israel accused of ‘genocidal acts’ against Palestinians during Gaza war in United Nations report

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8 hours ago

March 14, 2025

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Israel accused of 'genocidal acts' against Palestinians during Gaza war in United Nations report

Israel has been accused of carrying out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians during the Gaza conflict in a United Nations report.

It alleges a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys since 7 October 2023 – which Israel has denied and rejected.

“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” said the report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

It alleges this was done by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the war in Gaza, and by “imposing measures intended to prevent births” – one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.

In addition, a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, it said.

The report said: “Hundreds of Palestinian men and boys have been photographed and filmed in humiliating and degrading circumstances while subjected to acts of a sexual nature, including forced public nudity and stripping, full or partial.”

“Male detainees were subjected to attacks targeting their sexual and reproductive organs, including violence to their genitals…,” it added.

The commission alleged these and other forms of “sexualised torture” are “committed with either explicit orders or an implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership”.

“The evidence collected by the commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said its chair Navi Pillay.

“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report’s findings, saying they were biased and antisemitic.

“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organisation… the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations,” he said in a statement.

Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva also refuted the allegations as unfounded, biased, and lacking credibility.

“The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) has concrete directives… and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct,” it said in a statement, adding its review processes are in line with international standards.

A previous report by the commission in June last year accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed militant groups of serious rights violations in its 7 October 2023 multi-pronged surprise attack on southern Israel, including torture and degrading treatment.

Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take action to prevent acts of genocide during its war against Hamas.

South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the ICJ.

Israel is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity.

Arrest warrants for Mr Netanyahu, former defence secretary Yoav Gallant – and senior Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri – were issued by the ICC in November over alleged war crimes.