Nouadhibou, Mauritania ¨C From the Mauritanian coast, Ahmed, a Senegalese man, looks toward?Europe, the place he dreams of being but fears he will never reach due to heightened security against migrants in the west African country.
¡°Everyone wants to leave,¡± said the 34-year-old, who keeps a low profile in Mauritania to evade constant police checks.
But ¡°since security was stepped up, no one can get through,¡°?added Ahmed, whose name has been changed for security purposes.
Thousands of west Africans are living in Nouadhibou, hoping to board large, rickety canoes known as pirogues and head on a two-day journey to Spain¡¯s Canary Islands.
Such irregular migration has come to a sudden halt, however, following a crackdown by Mauritania, a vast, desert nation on the edge of the Atlantic, which serves as a major migration departure point.
Document checks, mass expulsions, coastal surveillance and smuggler arrests have caused migration to plummet over the past year.
A few months after signing a migration management partnership with the European Union, Mauritania launched its sometimes brutal campaign, outraging some of its neighbors who say migrants¡¯ human rights have been violated.
¡°You have to keep a low profile,¡± said Ahmed, adding: ¡°Police come looking for people including inside their homes.¡±
He was already expelled back to Senegal once in 2024, but returned to Mauritania where he now works as a mason, hoping to save the €1,200 ($1,400) necessary to embark on the journey again.
Nouadhibou is teeming with young men like Ahmed who are fleeing poverty.
A massive fishing port located on a peninsula shared with Western Sahara, the city is a key departure point for migrants.
They come to work in Nouadhibou before setting sail from the peninsula¡¯s Western Sahara side, a quasi no man¡¯s land under Moroccan control.
On the streets, patrols for undocumented migrants are a common sight.
Authorities say the operations are ¡°routine¡± and target individuals without legal status, but have not released figures on the scale of their activities.
According to the Mauritanian press, at least tens of thousands were expelled in 2025.
Abuses by Mauritanian authorities include serious human rights violations such as torture, rape, physical abuse, extortion, and summary or mass expulsions, according to a 2025 report by Human Rights Watch.
Even those with refugee status have not been spared from expulsion.
Most days at dusk, women and children filter onto a bus outside the Senegalese consulate in Nouadhibou, bound for the border city of Rosso, where they hope to obtain documents and thereby avoid police harassment.
Baby on lap, Ramatoulaye prepared to spend the night on the bus.
¡°You can¡¯t go out or go to the market, because if you¡¯re on the street, they pick you up and...
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.