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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.

Migrants begin their journey in Dakar.
Image:
Migrants begin their journey in Dakar

“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.

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Senegal has a 700 km coastline and many beaches are migrant departure points to the Canary Islands
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Senegal has a 700 km coastline and many beaches are migrant departure points to the Canary Islands

“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.

The Atlantic route has been called the busiest and deadliest
Image:
The Atlantic route has been called the busiest and deadliest

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.

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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.

Young men in Dakar are saving up to leave via safer more expensive options
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Young men in Dakar are saving up to leave via safer more expensive options

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.

Young men returning from Libya are looking for safer options after experiencing torture and enslavement
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Young men returning from Libya are looking for safer options after experiencing torture and enslavement

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.”

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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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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.

Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime.

After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.

Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much more precarious.

The least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa say their calls for a portion of the fund to be allocated to them have been ignored.

Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is one of the representatives who walked out.

“We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there,” he said on behalf of more than 40 small island and developing states, whose shorelines are being lost to rising sea levels.

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Shortly after he made a veiled threat of leaving COP29 altogether, saying: “We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE.

“If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”

Evans Njewa, who chairs a group of more than 40 least developed countries, said the current deal is “unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250bn a year annually by 2035.

This is more than double the previous goal of $100bn set 15 years ago, but nowhere near the annual $1.3trn that experts say is needed.

Sky News understands some developed countries like the UK were this morning willing to bump up the goal to $300bn.

Developing countries are angry not just about the finance negotiations, but also on how to make progress on a pledge from last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

A group of oil and producing countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, have tried to dilute that language, while the UK and island state are among those that have fought to keep it in.

Mr Schuster said all things being negotiated contain a “deplorable lack of substance”.

He added: “We need to see progress and follow up on the transition away from fossil fuels that we agreed last year. We have been asked to forget all about that at this COP, as though we are not in a critical decade and as though the 1.5C limit is not in peril.”

“We need to be shown the regard which our dire circumstances necessitate.”

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.

Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.

State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.

Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.

The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike
Image:
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike

Map of Lebanon and Israel

The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.

At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.

The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).

A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.

The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.

Pic: AP
Image:
Pic: AP

Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.

Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.

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US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.

Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.

According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.

It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia’s ‘unstoppable’ missile – as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia's 'unstoppable' missile - as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.

In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.

“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”

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Putin’s warning to the West

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He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”

Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.

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General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.

Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”

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Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.

NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.

EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’

Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

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Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?

Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.

At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.

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