Human Smuggling in an Age of Pandemic

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CHAPTERS 

[00:00:00]: Opening question: impact of closures on smuggling 

[00:04:19]: Niger-Libya crackdowns and evasive remote routes 

[00:07:27]: COVID economics drive new irregular migration 

[00:14:16]: Health checks, paperwork, costs, and smuggling incentives 

[00:19:02]: Document fraud likely to include COVID results 

[00:20:01]: Big question: catalyst or fundamental change? 

[00:20:21]: Both trends and new health-related xenophobia 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:01.840] 

Hi everyone. Welcome to Moving Beyond Pandemic, the podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that looks at how COVID-19 is reshaping all aspects of human movement, from tourism and business travel to labor migration and mobility. I'm Meghan Benton. I'm the research director for MPI's international work and for our sister organization, MPI Europe. The last couple of episodes have looked at how border management is adapting to the pandemic through border closures and quarantines and PCR testing at ports of entry. But today we're going to talk about the mother of all unintended consequences that's related to these shifts. The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on smuggling and irregular migration. Over the past six, seven months, border closures have made it much harder to move. They initially created a bit of a chilling effect as people sought to shelter in place or return to their families. But now we're seeing competing dynamics at play. An uneven global economic recovery, this constantly shifting COVID case picture both in countries of origin and destination, and then new and really fast evolving exit and entry restrictions and health requirements. So the question today, how is all of this affecting the decision making calculus for would be migrants, the routes and channels they take, and the business model of smugglers who facilitate many irregular movements.

[00:01:31.750] 

I spoke to Matt Herbert, who is the research manager for the North Africa and Sahel Observatory of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. He's an expert in irregular migration and smuggling and he's been following how the pandemic is affecting human smuggling and migration movements, especially through Northern Africa and to Europe.

[00:01:55.620] 

Hi Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. We're going to talk a little bit today about smuggling mainly and I know that you've been doing lots of work to really track how COVID-19 is affecting smuggling worldwide. I mean, one of the really sort of dramatic defining features of this pandemic has been border closures and travel restrictions. It's just been such a feature and it happened so quickly and it's happened everywhere. What did this mean for the sort of shadow world of the movement of people? Did it also lock down or has it kind of continued through the different phases of the pandemic?

[00:02:35.680] 

So we've certainly seen different phases within the shadow economy, specifically within human smuggling as it relates to COVID. So in the very first months of the pandemic's arrival here in the Mediterranean, and I should say that the area I and my team cover is primarily North Africa and the Sahel. And so that'll be where I focus my comments today. And so when we look back to March, when COVID started to become an issue of significant concern, not just for European countries, but for those in North Africa and those in the Sahel, you did start to see a number of border closures, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Niger, others, but as well a significant impact on mobility within countries. So it became not just difficult, for example, for migrants from Nigeria or from other areas of West Africa to get into Niger. It became very difficult for them to travel through the country itself. And so these border closures, both the border closures and the mobility restrictions, led to a pause, if you will, in some cases quite brief, in some cases actually continuing up to this summer in the transit of migrants through various areas, especially the Central Sahara, but very rapidly in some places, such as northern Niger and Libya, you did see a rebound.

[00:04:19.030] 

So for example, if you look at northern Niger and southern Libya, you both had the formal border closure on the Nigerian side, as well as an increase in armed group activity on the Libyan side. Armed groups that were largely sponsored by local communities or emanating local communities that were attempting to limit the movement of irregular migrants, of human smugglers into Libya, into their communities to due to the fear that there would be some sort of contagion, some sort of risk posed. Now, what that has now or what that morphed into after about a month, was an attempt by smugglers to evade these restrictions, evading them. Both on the Nigerian side as well as on the Libyan side, you saw a number of smugglers start to take routes through very underpopulated areas, zones that were very remote and often quite dangerous. And this posed actually a significant threat to a lot of the migrants that were taking passage with these smugglers. And in fact, you have seen a number of deaths that have occurred, not necessarily due to attacks or to nefarious activity, but rather because the smugglers are now forced to take routes that are so remote and the terrain so poor that vehicle breakdowns are a significant concern.

[00:05:57.270] 

So if you look back at the end of May, for example, there was a two vehicle convoy filled with Nigerian migrants that broke down in southern Libya. And all the migrants, unfortunately on that convoy passed away. Now, I should say too that some of the smugglers have also sought to benefit off COVID and off the demand that exists for migrant transport between the countries. So you have seen a sharp increase in prices. For example, movement from northern Niger up to the southern Libyan city of Sabhā has roughly tripled in price for non Nigerian migrants that are looking to make the journey. And even for Nigerians, it's roughly doubled in price. And so the impact on the smuggling economy is a bit mixed right now.

[00:06:51.990] 

So the business model of the smugglers has kind of changed in that they're taking more risky routes. Does that also mean that the type of operations has changed too? So instead of the sort of more informal, small scale operations, it's being crowded up by more professional operations that are happy to sort of have that appetite for risk or more organized. And then how has it changed who is traveling? You said that prices have risen. Does that mean that there are people who are more desperate? Are they people who are more wealthy? You know, how has the profile of migrants who are moving also changed?

[00:07:27.620] 

That's an important point. And I think that that actually gets into the third phase of the impact of COVID on all of this, which the fact that COVID has started to drive irregular migration itself or the ramifications of COVID. So I'll address your second point first in terms of who's moving. So both due to the border closures as well as the economic impact of COVID in Niger, in Libya, in Tunisia and other points throughout the Maghreb, you have started to see increased interest by nationals from some of those countries, notably Tunisia, in irregularly migrating. Essentially, this is economically-driven. The ramifications of the COVID shutdowns in each of these countries has really been catastrophic for especially small scale laborers or those within the informal economy. And so, for example, you've seen nearly 6,500 Tunisian irregular migrants be disembarked in Italy through the 13th of August. And this is extraordinarily high. But you're also starting to see, for example, original migrants from Niger going north into Libya in slightly greater numbers. And the smugglers are catering to these individuals because they don't have to cross borders to be able to arrive at the smuggling jump off point in northern Niger.

[00:08:59.980] 

Rather, they can just travel within the country and get there. And so they're starting to go north into Libya. But as well, some of those that are leaving Libya right now seem to be members of the migrant community that has been in situ in northern Libyan cities for quite some time. It's important to remember that the economic ramifications of COVID don't simply strike citizens of Libya, Tunisia and Niger and Libya, but also the migrant communities that live there. And oftentimes these are the individuals that are most economically at risk and most economically desperate. And so as we look at what has transpired in Libya to date, in terms of the number of departures of Irregular migrants towards Europe. And I think what we incredibly anticipate will come over the coming months, I think that we have to look not only at those, those migrants that have traveled to Libya as a transit point to go north to Europe, but also those that originally came to Libya as a destination country and now find themselves in increasingly strained economic circumstances.

[00:10:09.840] 

Well, how much of a factor are the sort of underdeveloped health systems? So particularly in Libya, you know, it's been a real concern following the civil war and the kind of collapse of infrastructure. Is. Is it really just the economic driver or is there also a kind of a push factor related to concerns about COVID and the sort of health response? I mean, I know that cases are still fairly low in Libya, I mean, if we can trust the data there.

[00:10:37.000] 

So the cases are fairly low so far in Libya. But I think that there's also an issue of full coverage. I think that we simply don't know what the prevalency of COVID in Libya right now is. And one of the reasons I flagged that is looking at arrivals that we've had here in Malta. So some of the boats that have come into the search and rescue zone from Malta and subsequently been taken to the island and disembarked, they've had extremely high levels of COVID prevalence. Amongst those that are disembarked, I think one vessel had 65 or 66 irregular migrants that were ill. And if there's that concentration of infection just within that small group, I think that it raises particular concerns about just what the general prevalency is, at least within the migrant community in Libya, if not within the broader community, in terms of concerns about the health sector and not motivating desires to move, I haven't heard that to date. But what I will say is that again, in the very early stages of the pandemic, one of the interesting things that we heard in social media, especially by North Africans that were considering migration to Europe, was actually originally hesitancy to go to Europe, hesitancy to regularly migrate from Morocco, from Algeria, up into Spain and Italy because of the relatively high prevalence of COVID in European countries.

[00:12:21.520] 

Now, obviously that's started to shift with the prevalence in North African states ticking up, and that in some European states declining, though, declining intermittently. But what I would say is that COVID very clearly figures in as a factor as people are deciding to migrate. And so I think that if there is a resurgence of COVID in Europe this fall and this winter, if it's perceived that the situation in Europe is manifestly worse health wise than what's seen in North African states. It actually could act as an interesting break to a degree on irregular migration decisions by some within North Africa.

[00:13:09.010] 

Really interesting. And you already kind of touched on this a little bit. But you talked about how border closures can increase demand for smuggling. And obviously one thing that's always spoken about is how the broad trend in recent years around the securitization of borders and greater surveillance and stronger border enforcement, this has all driven people to use smuggling networks. What do you think that the next six months or so holds if we see a shift from border closures to this kind of rethinking the border management infrastructure to have greater health processes and procedures, Whether it's kind of COVID testing borders or quarantine periods, or the color coding risk assessments that Malta has, has fallen into right now. And then a little bit further ahead, I suppose, when we have a vaccine, a widely available vaccine, and people may need a vaccine record, a COVID vaccine record to travel, do you think that smugglers are going to adapt to this? Will it drive demand for smugglers and what will the response be?

[00:14:16.260] 

Absolutely. And I think that it's an important question to start thinking about on the level of more robust health checks at national borders. I absolutely think that that is going to be continue to be an issue until well after a vaccine has been developed and has started to be disseminated. Now, it's important to look at that in two ways. So the first is, how is it that one can secure paperwork to get through those checks? Do you need to, for example, be checked on arrival? Can you simply present paperwork that indicates that you were checked in your country of origin? And if it's checked on arrival, I think it won't have that much of an impact necessarily on decisions to use smugglers or not use smugglers, because there will be perhaps a willingness to engage in those tests, provided that they are. You don't have to pay for them if you're a migrant. I think that if migrants are asked to pay for them or travelers are asked to pay for them at each national border crossing, that becomes a financial encumbrance that could be quite difficult for many to deal with. But the second aspect becomes the, the walling off of countries.

[00:15:45.490] 

So for example, if you look at Europe, what used to be a fairly open travel zone, with for example, very limited checks going from Italy into France or France into Germany, if there is a continued walling off of countries with national checks of COVID status being mandatory, I think what you could see, especially if the migrants are regular, is an attempt to circumvent that by whatever means necessary. Not because they're worried that they might have COVID, but rather because there would be a worry that those checks then would also look at legal status or non legal status. And so if that is the case, I think that you would find potentially an increase in smuggling within Europe. So for example, human smugglers beginning to operate between Italy and France, or France to Germany or other areas where traditionally the amount of human smuggling activity has been extremely limited. So it could actually drive a robust boost in that market. Now, on vaccinations, I think that it remains to be seen just how quickly a vaccination regime will be developed, how long it offers protection for and just how it's rolled out. And these are all massive question marks in the future.

[00:17:11.090] 

But that said, I think that we can be fairly sure that vaccination, or opportunities for vaccination will not occur concurrently all across the globe. Rather they will occur consecutively, with some countries and some individuals enjoying access to a vaccine first and many others, especially those that are in developing nations or within economically underserved communities, within developed nations, having access to a vaccine only very late in the process. And so there has been some discussion floated in some areas about the idea of a vaccine passport or some indication that one has been vaccinated. And I think that if, if that was, if that was developed, that would simply prevent still a further bar towards legal migration avenues, legal movement avenues for those in economically underserved or underdeveloped areas, and actually provide more of an impetus, especially for those that are looking to, to migrate for economic reasons anyways, to avoid looking first to legal channels, which for example, in Tunisia many do at the very get go, instead moving directly to the informal and illicit channels that oftentimes are far more dangerous for the migrants themselves. But at the same time, if they're the only credible avenue for being able to get from, say, Tunisia or Morocco to Europe, I think that you'll see a focus on that.

[00:18:53.310] 

And have smugglers already begun adapting? Have you seen any kind of falsifying of COVID tests and health records?

[00:19:02.190] 

I have not yet, or at least not within the area that I focus on. But I think that it's just a matter of time. I mean, certainly there's a rampant document falsification industry in North Africa and the Sahel writ large, you know, focused on everything from visas to false passports to falsified marriage contracts and work contracts. And so I don't think that it would be a particularly large step to move into falsification of test results. And again, this would not necessarily be in a nefarious sort of way, or at least not on the part of those buying these results. They're not trying to conceal something. Rather they're attempting to get around an additional bar on their movement that, that they face because of the unique set of circumstances that we, we have right now.

[00:20:01.520] 

So we're close to being out of time. So I just wanted to end with a difficult question, an overarching question, which is, do you think that COVID has just kind of catalyzed the existing policy challenge around smuggling and irregular migration or has it fundamentally changed it?

[00:20:21.810] 

I think to a degree, a bit of both. So, yes, it's catalyzed pre existent trends, especially those that focus on the building up of borders and the limitations of mobility that we've seen seen especially around European nations and migration from North Africa and the Sahel. But at the same time, I will say that it's essentially catalyzed something new as well, which is health-related xenophobia. And so while, yes, you have had outbreaks of various communicable diseases in the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, various other outbreaks in areas of the world that have raised health concerns in the United States, in the UK and Europe, you haven't seen panic, popular panic around it, nor those health concerns driving government policy. With COVID you do very clearly. I mean, COVID is the majority of policy challenge across a broad swath of countries right now. And so I think the very real risk that policymakers face or the challenge that they face is how to ensure that they cater to the very real health concerns of their voter bases without tipping into the sort of xenophobia that is paralleling perilously close to the surface with a lot of this, the desire to keep everybody that might pose a threat, everybody that might be infected out of a country.

[00:22:05.070] 

And I think that the particular issue with all this is that it's not a one time quick affair that we're dealing with here. It's not a month of worrying. The COVID pandemic is one that's already been with us for, I mean, I guess we're, we're going on month seven at time of taping and you know, likely it will be with us for another 12 to 24 months. And so not only do public opinions have time within that, that zone to, to form and to be shaped, they have time to, to settle into, you know, into quite a difficult and dangerous set of drivers for political impulses and activity.

[00:22:53.970] 

Thank you so much. This has been extremely interesting, really informative. Thank you for your time today.

[00:23:00.130] 

Thank you very much, Meghan. It's absolutely my pleasure to have spoken with you.

[00:23:06.050] 

It's clear from Matt's comments that we're only at the beginning of understanding how seismic a shift COVID-19 will be for the shadow migration world. We've already seen how border and travel restrictions are pushing people into more dangerous routes. A major question for me is whether new health requirements such as negative PCR tests will end up pushing people into informal routes as Matt suggested, and create more of a two-tier mobility system. He also warned against seeing the vaccine as a silver bullet if initial access to the vaccine is spotty and geographically uneven. Given it's probably just a matter of time before smugglers and the document falsification industry that supports them turns its attention to test results or vaccination records and we could see an increase in informal routes as people see fewer options to move through regular channels. We'll be following this closely in coming weeks, including looking ahead to the policy response and the implications for the global governance of migration. If you'd like to join us, please subscribe to this podcast Moving Beyond Pandemic. Wherever you find your podcasts, you can also go to our website migrationpolicy.org podcasts while you're there, we have a ton of information about COVID-19 and migration.

[00:24:19.250] 

Migrationpolicy.org topics Coronavirus I'd like to thank my colleagues Lisa Dixon, Michelle Mittelstadt and Kena Guerrero for producing this podcast. The music you heard today was Juno in the Space Maze by Lou Pop. I'm Meghan Benton. I'll see you next time.