March 2022: The Libyan authorities deport hundreds of Egyptian migrants, most of them minors

Last March witnessed the deportation of large numbers of irregular migrants from Libya to Egypt through the land border crossings between the two countries. “Refugees Platform in Egypt” followed many deportation incidents and obtained lists of names of Egyptians who were deported during the past month from Libya to Egypt. (You can find the lists of names in the news link - which are the lists published by the “Branch of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Agency in Tobruk”).

Among the documented deportation incidents:

1- On March 29, Libyan security forces found 93 Egyptians, some from Assiut and Minya and others from the Delta, in a smuggling warehouse in Amsaad, Libya. They had arrived in Libya through “migration brokers”, and some of them moved through other regions within Libya over a period of five months in remote warehouses. The Directorate Support Force deported them all on March 29 through the Amsaad land crossing.

2- On March 26, a Libyan security force arrested 139 Egyptian immigrants, including unaccompanied/separated minor children. The security forces handed them over to the Tobruk shelters, and then the Libyan authorities deported 135 of them to Egypt through the Amsaad land crossing on the same day.

3- Before that, on 2022 March 14, the Libyan security forces, called the “Directorate Support Force,” arrested eight Egyptian immigrants while trying to enter Libya irregularly using a "Toyota" four-wheel drive car. They were all deported to Egypt on the same day.

4- On 2022 March 10, the Libyan security forces, in cooperation with the Directorate Support, deported 34 Egyptian irregular migrants from Libya through the Amsaad land crossing.

In a previous press statement, Major Ibrahim Al-Shuhaibi, “Head of the Anti-Illegal Immigration Sector” at the Amsaad land crossing in Libya, in his interview with “Cairo 24” on 2022 March 27, said that “more than 700 Egyptian youths have been deported from Libya in March, after rescuing them from drowning, or after finding them held in the smugglers' warehouse", adding that "the smugglers take about 200,000 Egyptian pounds from each person".

Previously, It was reported that a boat carrying about 23 immigrants sank off the coast of the Libyan city of Tobruk in the late evening of 2022 March 11. The victims were Egyptians and two Syrians. The Libyan authorities found six people alive then, and the search for the missing at sea continued for several days until the Libyan authorities could recover many of the victims' bodies. The last body was recovered on 2022 March 31, and the identified bodies were transferred to their relatives in Egypt.