Africans Risk Death at Sea for New Life Abroad

They had left on Feb. 4 on a crowded fishing boat. It sank in darkness and most of those on board drowned, according to survivors who were picked up by a passing fishing trawler.

One of the survivors told Jope that after the boat went down, he had floated in the water with Deye until a large wave came and washed Deye away. Deye's body was pulled from the water by the trawler crew, but the bodies of his two other friends, N'Daga N'Daye, 23, and Abdoullah Lak, 19, were not found.

"The frontier between Africa and Europe is turning into one of the most dangerous migratory passages ever seen," said Rickard Sandell, an immigration specialist at the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, a private research group. Sandell predicts that immigration pressure on Europe from Africa will only intensify. "We are just seeing the start of something much, much bigger," he said.

Estimates of the death toll surpass 1,000. But officials concede that they have no real way of knowing the number of immigrants who have died at sea, their bodies never found.

How long Nouadhibou will remain a jumping-off point is unclear. Authorities are mobilizing to stop the boats from leaving. The Spanish and Mauritanian governments are building a 320-bed detention center at the edge of town. The local police station, where migrants caught at sea are now held pending deportation, is unable to cope with the flow.

"We are victims of an immigration that we cannot control," Haye said.

In addition, immigrants who do reach the Canaries may find it less hospitable. Spanish officials can invoke an agreement with Mauritania that says illegal immigrants who pass through the country can be returned to it, regardless of their nationality. At least 170 have been brought back in the past week under that agreement.

Sitting in the small room that he had shared with his friends, Jope pulled a photo of Deye out of an old plastic bag and told the story of the men's deaths without emotion.

He smiled as he remembered arguments about soccer that he'd had with Deye. And how difficult it was to call his friend's mother in Senegal and break the news. But he said Deye understood the risk he was taking, so his death was not a surprise. "We have no choice," he said. "It could be me next."

Jope said he planned to go home to Senegal, pay his mother back, save some more, then come back to Nouadhibou to try again.