Seven migrant women and children died metres from shore in Canary Islands
Two five-year-old girls and a 16-year-old were among the dead, emergency services said. The migrant boat capsized as rescuers were escorting it to port at La Restringa on the El Hierro island on Wednesday, the services said.
"I heard the screams and didn't hesitate. Like any citizen faced with an emergency or an accident, I got in my car, rushed to where the boat was, and helped however I could," Javier Iglesias, a La Restringa resident, said at the funeral of the seven, which was also attended by surviving migrants.
"What really moves you and leaves an impression is when you see the faces, the expressions of those people who didn't reach their dream, just five metres from the shore."
The number of migrants reaching the Canary Islands from West Africa hit an all-time high in 2024, but the number of arrivals has fallen this year, Interior Ministry data shows.
In the first five months of 2024, 4,808 people died on the perilous Atlantic voyage to the Canaries after leaving Africa, according to migrant rights group Walking Borders.
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The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
US judge clears path for eight immigrants to be deported to South Sudan
Eight migrants lost their last-ditch effort to halt their deportation to South Sudan by the Trump administration on Friday, clearing the way for their imminent transfer after a judge in Massachusetts denied their request. Lawyers for the justice department said the men were scheduled to be flown to South Sudan on Friday at 7pm Eastern Time after two courts considered the request on an emergency basis on 4 July, when courts were otherwise closed for the Independence Day holiday. Lawyers for the migrants had filed new claims in Washington late on Thursday after the supreme court clarified that a judge in Massachusetts could no longer require the US Department of Homeland Security to hold them. District judge Randolph Moss in Washington paused the deportation briefly on Friday afternoon but sent the case back to US district judge Brian Murphy in Boston. Murphy said the supreme court order required him to deny their bid, saying their claims that deportation was being used as a form of punishment were 'substantially similar' to the ones he had ruled on previously. The order was the latest round in the fight over the legality of the Trump administration's campaign to deter immigration through high-profile deportations to countries where migrants say they face safety concerns, and which has already gone from lower courts to the supreme court twice. The eight men awaiting deportation are from countries including Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan. All have been convicted of serious crimes, which the Trump administration has emphasized in justifying their banishment. Many had either finished or were close to finishing serving sentences, and had 'orders of removal' directing them to leave the US. A lawyer for the men have said they could 'face perilous conditions' upon arriving in the country. South Sudan is enmeshed in civil war, and the US government advises no one should travel there before making their own funeral arrangements. The administration has been trying to deport the immigrants for weeks. The government flew them to the US naval base in Djibouti but couldn't move them further because Murphy had ruled no immigrant could be sent to a new country without a chance to have a court hearing. Jennie Pasquarella, a lawyer with the Seattle Clemency Project who represents the migrants, called the ruling disappointing. 'Both courts' decisions today have denied them their opportunity to have these claims heard and to protect their own lives,' she said. 'That is what is so tragic about where we came out.'
Times
13 hours ago
- Times
Why Germany's border gambit threatens the EU's asylum rule book
At the hamlet of Lubieszyn, next to the red and white-striped pillars that mark the Polish side of the frontier with Germany, volunteers in high-vis jackets stop passing cars and check for migrants. At another border crossing near by, a gazebo displays the slogan: 'This is our Polish home, our rules.' Approximately 160 miles to the south, on the Pope John Paul II Bridge across the river Neisse where the Polish town of Zgorzelec meets the chocolate-box German city of Görlitz, a group of women in yellow vests staff a tent that bears the words: 'Stop immigration.' This is the Border Defence Movement, a vigilante organisation that has been mounting 'citizens' patrols' along the German frontier in protest against Berlin's decision to start routinely turning back irregular migrants into Poland. With a political storm brewing in Warsaw, the Polish government has been stung into imposing its own temporary checkpoints on the border from Monday, as well as similar measures on its northeastern frontier with Lithuania. On Friday the army announced that it would send 5,000 Polish servicemen to support the border guards along the frontiers with Germany and Lithuania. Adam Szlapka, Poland's Europe minister, said: 'The situation is asymmetrical. Germany is causing incidents by sending migrants back to Poland without making sure that they will be picked up by Polish border guards, and they have their own statistics, we don't. 'We need to have control over migration. We need to know who is entering Poland and whether they are persons returned in accordance with due procedures or not.' He later warned the vigilantes patrolling the border to stand down. Speaking after a hastily convened security meeting in Warsaw, he said: 'Only the border guard has the right to control our borders. Anyone impersonating officers or hindering their work will face consequences.' • Merz: Strict asylum policy needed to stop Germany becoming overloaded This is not how the free-travel Schengen zone was supposed to look. Yet these ructions are the result of what allies of Friedrich Merz, Germany's conservative chancellor, characterise as a paradoxical gamble to save Europe's freedom of movement by restricting it. Merz took power two months ago after a Bundestag election where the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came within two percentage points of beating his Christian Democratic Union. Days later, the AfD pulled ahead of the CDU and its Bavarian affiliate in the polls. Under intense pressure to curb irregular immigration, Merz's government has been churning out policies. It has suspended most refugees' rights to bring their relatives to Germany. It has also proposed negotiations with the Taliban over a deal to send Afghan criminals back to their country of origin. Merz's confidants have even signalled that they would like to clip the wings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg so that its judges have to define certain asylum rights more narrowly. Yet the centrepiece of its strategy is an order for border police to turn back virtually all asylum seekers across Germany's 2,300-mile land frontier. Aside from 'vulnerable' groups such as pregnant women or unaccompanied children, migrants who cannot prove that they have a right to enter the country are told to retrace their steps. The basic idea is that EU rules oblige asylum seekers to lodge an application with the first member state they set foot in. Since Germany is surrounded by other EU states, that means virtually all of the asylum seekers that come to the country should theoretically be processed somewhere else. Usually this is a laborious and time-consuming process that often fails because of missing documents. Merz's administration argues that it can dispense with the process entirely since the volume of irregular immigration is a 'national emergency'. Heiko Teggatz, the chairman of the federal police branch of the German Police Union, which is responsible for border security, said that the turnbacks at the frontier were a straightforward procedure in practice. 'The foreigner is simply not permitted to enter,' he said. 'You could also call it a 'dismissal' at the border.' The migrants are photographed and have their fingerprints taken and logged in a national database, so that if they do cross the border and apply for asylum at a later date their application can be automatically rejected. This measure, introduced two days after Merz took office, has been immensely controversial within Germany itself. Judges have been chipping away at its legal foundation. Last month the administrative court in Berlin ruled that the rejection of three Somali asylum seekers at the Frankfurt an der Oder border crossing with Poland had broken EU law and there was no evidence of a national emergency that would justify suspending the normal processes. While the interior ministry insists that the verdicts apply only to the individual cases in question, the president of the federal administrative court — effectively the top judge in the German asylum system — has suggested that the whole policy may be unlawful. Andreas Rosskopf, head of the border police division of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei, the main German police union, said he was concerned that officers could be prosecuted for carrying out unlawful orders from their superiors on the frontier. This week the policy has also come under fire from Angela Merkel, Merz's predecessor as chancellor, and from his Social Democratic party coalition partner. Yet the criticism in Germany is mild in comparison with the furore in Poland. MPs from the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party have accused the Germans of dumping thousands of 'illegal immigrants' on Polish soil every day. President Duda and his incoming successor Karol Nawrocki, both of whom are aligned with PiS, have endorsed the Border Defence Movement patrols. Agnieszka Kasinska-Metryka, professor of political science at Kielce University in Poland, said many voters were left with the impression that the Polish government had lost control of the border and 'citizens had to take matters into their own hands'. In response, Donald Tusk, Poland's beleaguered centre-right prime minister, said that his patience with Berlin was 'becoming exhausted' and it was time to tackle the 'uncontrolled flows of migrants across the Polish-German border'. German officials feel that the issue has been blown up out of all proportion to the reality of the policy. A Times analysis of German and Polish government data suggests they have a point. Provisional figures from the German interior ministry show that only 28 would-be asylum seekers were turned away at the Polish border under the 'national emergency' mechanism over the first fortnight after it came into force. Approximately 1,350 people have been turned back on the Polish-German border since May 8, but only 128 of them under the new rule. Across all of Germany's borders, the number of migrants denied entry last month was in fact at its lowest level for any June since 2021, possibly because migration flows into Europe as a whole have ebbed over the past few years. Polish statistics also show that since the start of May the German border guards have turned back an average of 724 migrants into Poland each month, compared with 782 a month over the same period in 2024. Rosskopf said the Polish and German border forces tended to coordinate fairly well in practice, although handing over responsibility for the rejected asylum seekers was often a 'lengthy and complicated' job. However, Rosskopf is worried that after the Polish border controls kick in next week, migrants may find themselves in a 'ping-pong' situation where neither side will let them pass. 'On Monday we might see that we as the German federal police are turning people back at the German-Polish border and our Polish colleagues won't take them in at all, or will turn them back after a short delay,' he said. 'In our view this situation absolutely must be avoided. People cannot be allowed to be turned into footballs by political decisions.' Both sides of the dispute insist they share the same ultimate aim: to fix the Schengen zone by reshaping the European asylum system. 'We believe that the Schengen area is a monumental achievement,' Szlapka said. 'Our interior ministers are in contact, and inevitably, we must reach a situation in which we are jointly fighting illegal immigration, while within the Schengen area we want the flow of people to remain free.' Later this month the two countries' interior ministers will join colleagues from similarly hawkish EU states such as Denmark and Austria on the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, to try and forge a joint position. The Germans, who are hosting the meeting, would like to lead a push to facilitate deportations to Rwanda-style 'return hubs' outside the bloc. Yet there is considerable mutual mistrust. The domestic politics of immigration has reached such a fever pitch in both Poland and Germany that compromise may well remain elusive.
Times
13 hours ago
- Times
Is that orca being friendly or am I turtly deluded?
It must be a relief to know, if your boat is attacked by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, that they are probably only playing. Some scientists think the whales have discovered that detached rudders make excellent bath toys. We reported this week that their latest puzzling behaviour — the whales', not the scientists' — is the apparent offering of gifts of food, and I use the term loosely, to humans. Readers were quick to jump in with their theories in the comments section. 'Maybe,' suggested Breaca Moger, 'they think the humans seem to be good at killing things so they are encouraging us to work cooperatively with them.' Carl May took a more spiritual view: 'Throughout our history as a species, we have made offerings to beings that we imagined were superior to ourselves. Perhaps, looking at our achievements, these creatures are bringing us their sacrifices, imagining that it will bring them favours in return.' The experts in our report had admitted they could not rule out a darker, 'Machiavellian' explanation for the behaviour. 'Beware of orcas bearing gifts,' Samuel Lowe warned. 'Yes,' agreed J Prawer, 'the turtle they brought may have been wooden and filled with dozens of heavily armed orcas.' Orcamemnon was presumably waiting out of sight. Akilleres had died earlier. John Holmes noticed a curious coincidence in Letters. 'On Thursday you published two letters from the little Hampshire village of Hartley Wintney (from Neil Grundy and Elizabeth Dalling). Is this a record? I will discuss this matter with the inhabitants of our two duck ponds.' John is also from Hartley Wintney, of course. The two letters concerned Starmer's U-turns and Wimbledon linesmen and women, and the letters editor assures me there was nothing untoward in their selection. Readers will no doubt have noticed similar quirks of fate in Letters as well as the nearby birthdays column — three famous actors on one day, say — and I expect statisticians would tell us it would be odder not to see such conjunctions. In fact it brings to mind the so-called birthday paradox: if you put 22 people in a room, the next person to walk in is more likely to share a birthday with one of them than not. Alternatively, there is something in the water — and I don't mean the ducks — at Hartley Wintney. A letter from Dr Jeremy Auchincloss of Elgin on the same day had cleared up a debate that had been raging, or perhaps slowly coagulating and ripening. He explained that 'the science behind cheese and dreaming is straightforward: cheese is rich in tryptophan, one of the building blocks for neurotransmitters that influence sleep and moods. Wallace and Gromit never eat Wensleydale before bedtime.' Grand advice for David Ben-Nathan, who had written to Feedback: 'It was nice to find out that I am not alone in finding cheese causes nightmares. I am in my late fifties and in the last few years have noticed that when I have even a small amount of cheese, even in the morning, I usually have very disturbing dreams. I now rarely buy cheese because of this. It's good to know that there is a university where this is a whole area of study. I may contact the researchers and see if they will pay for me to go out to Montreal if I volunteer to take part in some experiments.' I wish you bonne chance, David. I predict they will discover 1) you have lactose intolerance, as in our report; 2) you are being haunted by the ghost of a former business partner; or 3) tryptophan. I cannot claim to have earned my ornithologist's wings, but the word lover in me could not resist having a beak at Richard King's query. Richard, from Macclesfield, said that for the past month he had been enthralled by watching his bird table through the kitchen window. 'There have been numerous daily visits there by a family of spotted woodpeckers: first the adults feeding the newly fledged young, and now the youngsters managing on their own. In attempting to determine the male v female and youngster v adult attributes and colourings, I have resorted to consulting the RSPB's and other books on British birds. They all give the same names. Question: why should Dendrocopos major, the great spotted woodpecker, be so named, whereas Dendrocopos minor is called the lesser spotted woodpecker? Why not greater and lesser? Or great and small? Any guidance you can give would be appreciated.' I'm not sure about guidance but I reckon I can make things a bit more confusing. In geography we tend to use greater and lesser, as in the Antilles. Body parts too we label greater and lesser — the hippocampus, say — but constellations such as Ursa Major and Minor are generally called Great Bear and Lesser Bear. Or Little Bear. Now for the birds. The larger Dendrocopos — a wonderful Greek compound meaning tree-basher — has occasionally been known as greater. Bird nomenclature can be a little flighty. But the British Ornithologists' Union publishes a handy table, which shows that since 1923 the greater black-backed gull has changed its name to the great black-backed gull, while its lesser cousin has remained lesser. In the same period the two spotted woodpeckers have remained great and lesser, but have unaccountably changed their genus from Dryobates to Dendrocopos. I can't blame them: I'd far rather be a treebasher than a woodwalker. In late breaking news I hear our lesser basher may be changing his Latin name back to Dryobates. I warned you Richard's question would put the caterpillar among the woodpeckers.
