Record number of migrants expelled by Algeria to Niger in 2024, according to an NGO

Since 2014, irregular migrants from Niger but also from other African countries, including women and minors, have been frequently returned from Algeria, a transit point to Europe.

“At least 31,404 people (…) were expelled from Algeria to the Niger border during the year 2024b”, indicates in a press release Alarme Phone Sahara which comes to the aid of migrants in the desert between the two countries.

In 2024, the number of people expelled by Algiers “exceeds all documented figures from previous years”, including that of 2023 with 26,031 returned, she underlines.

In a previous report, APS indicated that Algeria had turned back some 20,000 migrants between January and August 2024 alone.

APS regularly denounces the expulsions of migrants “in brutal conditions” with “in the worst cases, deadly consequences”.

Read also: Niger summons Algerian ambassador to “protest” against violence during pushbacks of migrants

In September, the NGO’s communications manager, Moctar Dan Yaye, explained to AFP that migrants were “arrested during raids in the city, at their homes, their workplace or at the border. Tunisian” then “regrouped in Tamanrasset (southern Algeria) before being transported in trucks to Niger”.

Furthermore, on January 1, 770 Nigerien migrants pushed back from Libya, another neighbor, “returned to national territory”, according to the Nigerien army.

But this expulsion operation initiated by Tripoli was “supervised by a (military) escort to the locality of Dirkou”, on the Niger side, specifies the army which indicates that their reception was “coordinated” by the security forces and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In April, the Nigerien authorities summoned the Algerian ambassador to “protest” against “the violent nature” of these repatriation and refoulement operations.

In turn, Algiers summoned the Niger ambassador while deeming the allegations of the Niger authorities “unfounded”.

In November 2023, the new Nigerien military regime, which came to power in a coup a few months earlier, repealed a 2015 law criminalizing migrant smuggling.

Since then, “many people have moved freely” on the “routes” of migration “without fear of the reprisals” they faced before, indicates Alarme Phone Sahara.