Newly released figures from Frontex, the EU’s border protection agency, revealed on Thursday, September 15th, that over 114,000 illegal migrant crossings across the Mediterranean to Italy were recorded between January and August, twice the number recorded during the same period last year, accounting for half of the illegal border crossing detected in 2023.
The agency, in its latest press release, stated that the number of illegal border crossings along the bloc’s external borders jumped by 18% in the first eight months of 2023, exceeding 232,350 instances, and marking the highest total for the period from January to August since the 2016 migrant crisis.
While the primary points of departure for those making the dangerous journey across the Central Mediterranean were Tunisia and Libya, most migrants come from Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, and Guinea, Frontex wrote.
Furthermore, the agency noted that the already heightened migratory pressure along the Central Mediterranean route “could persist in the coming months,” noting that competition among human traffickers in North Africa has become increasingly fierce, leading to lower prices for those looking to make the perilous crossing.
Per International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, some 2,325 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean so far this year—most of them on the Central Mediterranean route.
The Italian island of Lampedusa, which sits just off the coast of Tunisia and whose population stands at about 6,000, earlier this week on Tuesday, September 12th, witnessed an unprecedented influx of illegal migrants arrivals, with more than one hundred boats, carrying some 5,000 illegals, making landfall on the island, as The European Conservative previously reported.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the right-wing, anti-globalist Lega party Matteo Salvini, who successfully curbed illegal entries during his tenure as interior minister in a previous administration, described the illegal landings as an “act of war” against Italy.”
“If 120 boats arrive in Lampedusa at the same time, this is not an isolated incident, but an act of war. This would lead not only to Lampedusa but to the entire Italian society, to collapse,” Salvini said emphatically at a conference with the foreign press in Rome.
Despite Italy’s government, led by Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, claiming to be hardliners on illegal immigration, some 126,000 illegal migrants have reached Italian shores so far this year, in contrast with the 66,000 that arrived during the same period last year.
