Around 300 migrants arrived on the Spanish islands on Thursday, according to Spanish agency reports. While migrant arrivals on the Spanish mainland have decreased this year, arrivals on the Canaries have increased dramatically.
As part of kits for migrants rescued at sea The Ibby library on the island of Lampedusa has donated picture books to the NGO migrant rescue ships run by Sea Watch, Mediterranea and Open Arms.
More and more people are taking to small dinghies to cross the English Channel to the UK, in spite of the efforts on both sides to stop them. Many are desperate to escape unemployment and homelessness they experienced elsewhere in Europe.
European border agency Frontex has reported a 14% drop in the number of "illegal border crossings" at Europe's external borders in the first eight months of 2020 to 60,800 compared to the same period last year. In August, numbers were down 30% on July, the agency said on September 10.
The organization Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) has reported that 2,235 Tunisian migrants reached Italy's coasts in August. This brings to 7,890 the total number of Tunisians who landed in Italy illegally between January 1 and August 31, 2020.
There has been an increase in migrant arrivals in Italy by land through the Balkan Route, according to Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese. She announced that controls in the border region of Friuli Venezia Giulia would be increased to combat clandestine migration.
The Spanish coast guard has confirmed that they rescued 283 migrants from several boats on Tuesday and Wednesday as they approached the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Among the new arrivals, one dead body was found on board.
The Italian government answered pleas from the island's mayor by removing some people from camps there. The migrants, 220 of whom were infected with COVID-19, will quarantine on large ferries before disembarking in Sicily.
More than 400 migrants crossed the English Channel on Wednesday, setting a new record for a single day. Dozens of others who attempted the crossing were handed over to French police on the coast near Calais.
Lampedusa Mayor Totò Martello postponed a general strike on the Sicilian island, which had been called to protest the increase of migrant arrivals, after Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte invited Martello to Rome together with Sicily Governor Nello Musumeci, to discuss how to manage migrant reception.
Italian finance police officer Maurizio Giunta was at the stern of a sailboat with 20 migrants aboard on Sunday morning off the coast of Calabria, when there was an explosion on board. "I had a broken leg, but I wanted to save those people who were afraid to jump in the water because they didn't know how to swim," Giunta said.
Some tourists on the island of Lampedusa gave their accounts of the migrant crisis on the island, which for many of the tourists, is a non-existent one. Some of the tourists said the migrants on the island are like "ghosts" because although the media talks about them, they aren't seen.