Migrants are increasingly taking dangerous boat journeys to reach Europe

In a park a few blocks from Agadir’s Atlantic beach in southwest Morocco, a man named Ballet Martial rolls up his shirtsleeve. 

The 42-year-old electrician, who fled economic hardship in Cameroon, shows a mottled scar the size of a tennis ball on his forearm. It happened several years ago, during the last of his many attempts to scale the border fence into Ceuta, Spain, in Morocco’s far north.

“I was snagged up on the razor wire when a Moroccan policeman caught me by my feet and started pulling me down,” he said. 

The razors sank into his flesh like fangs, Martial said. When he fell to the ground, the police beat him and broke his ribs. Those are just the physical injuries, he said; there are also the lingering psychological ones. 

Martial, and tens of thousands of migrants who reach Agadir each year, are trying to get to Europe. After long, arduous journeys from surrounding countries — many from West Africa — they rely on sea routes that start on similar beaches.

When the coast is clear — literally — smugglers will crowd migrants into open wooden fishing boats and motor through the swells toward the Canary Islands. The clandestine trip often takes over a week.

But many don’t survive the difficult journey. In fact, more than 10,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea in 2024, a report released by a Spanish migration rights group said in late December. 

Overall, estimated deaths rose 58% compared to 2023, the report added. Most of the 10,457 deaths recorded up until Dec. 15 took place along the so-called Atlantic route — considered one of the world’s most dangerous.

Just getting to the crossing, though, is a feat in and of itself. 

Earlier on in Martial’s journey, in the desert between Niger and Algeria, a group of bandits, who he called jihadists, stopped his bus.

“They held us and raped the women in our group. Right before our eyes. There was nothing we could do.”

And then, he said, some of the men he was with made a fatal mistake.  

“They tried to hide their money. They told our captors they had nothing. The jihadists said, ‘If we find anything on you, we’ll kill you.’ There were 26 of us. They shot four guys for lying. Then they told us, “Go on. You’re free.” I want that memory to go away, but it won’t.”

Martial said that he wasn’t giving up, though. “All that I’ve lived through has just given me more courage. When you’ve looked death in the face and survived, you only feel more motivated to reach your goal.”

Stories like his are all too common in Agadir where migrants pass through for all kinds of reasons, according to local human rights activist Kamga Gauthier.

“[There are] those who’ve failed at borders in the north,” Gauthier said, adding, “some who are recovering from injuries. Many from the south stop in Agadir to rest and gather their strength.”

Migrants feel safe here, he said, because locals are welcoming. 

“Farmers need migrants to work their land, and migrants need the money to pay for a seat on a smuggler’s boat.”

Morocco and the western African nations of Mauritania and Senegal have all pledged to stop the human smuggling from their coasts. Spain and the European Union pay these countries hundreds of millions of dollars a year to do so. Yet, the boats are setting out in record numbers.

That’s partly because this is big business. In downtown Agadir, one migrant seat on a boat is expensive.

One woman who had taken the day off from her farm job picking tomatoes and was afraid to give her name, said that she left Cameroon six years ago, but she still hasn’t saved enough for a seat on a boat.

“The price for me and a child would be over $3,000,” she said. “Women with kids pay more because they say we are weak, that we can’t run as fast as men. That we need to be taken care of.”

And, like Martial, she has a long story about a horrible journey. She was robbed, nearly raped, abandoned by guides in the desert — and while fleeing Algerian police in the woods at the Moroccan border, she lost one of her twin babies.

“I hid the baby in some tall grass, and ran off with my other son. But when I came back later, the child I’d hidden was nowhere to be found.”

The next morning, she reached Morocco and went straight to the police for help.

“They told me, ‘A baby alone in the cold woods overnight? We’re sorry,’ they said, ‘but it wouldn’t have survived.’”

That same morning, the Algerian police agreed to search. They took her with them back up into the hills. But she couldn’t find the spot again.

“And then, I heard some soft crying,” she said. “The baby must have been nearly out of strength. And then, an officer shouted, ‘I found him. I found the child.’”

The woman called it her miracle. One day soon, she said, she hopes for another — that she’ll step out onto this beach in Agadir with both of her boys, now 6-year-olds, slip onto a crowded boat and reach the other side.

The AP contributed to this report.