The Protest Outside The UN
In Tripoli, the anger arrived with tents, sand and slogans.
Hundreds of Libyans gathered outside the UN refugee agency’s office in the Sarraj neighbourhood and blocked the main gate with a sand barrier. They chanted “Libya only for Libyans” and accused the UN of trying to settle migrants permanently inside the country. The UN denied that any such resettlement programme exists and warned against incitement targeting migrants and refugees.
The language was the story. Protesters were not only asking for border control. They were saying migrants did not belong. Libya has become one of the world’s most dangerous holding zones for people fleeing war, poverty and instability, especially from Sudan and sub-Saharan Africa. More than 900,000 migrants live in Libya, a country of about 7 million people.
South Africa’s Violence Turned Deadly
In South Africa, the same anger has already turned into blood.
Mozambique reported citizens killed in xenophobic attacks in Mossel Bay, while hundreds more Mozambicans were caught in the unrest and neighbouring governments began helping citizens return home. Migrants fled into mountains and town halls after violence surged across multiple provinces. Hundreds sheltered in community buildings waiting to see if it was safe to return.
The contradiction is brutal. President Cyril Ramaphosa stood beside Kenyan President William Ruto and said South Africans are not xenophobic. In the same week, his government announced diplomatic envoys to affected African countries after attacks on foreign nationals created serious regional fallout.
This is not only mob violence. It is politics. Migrants are being blamed for unemployment, crime and collapsing services. But the people being hunted are often poor workers, refugees and families who crossed borders because survival had already failed somewhere else.
Europe Moves The Problem Away
Europe is using cleaner language, but the direction is the same.
The European Union has agreed rules allowing member states to create “return hubs” outside the bloc for rejected asylum seekers. The law also extends detention periods and adds penalties for non-cooperation. Rights groups warn the measures could create enforcement conditions similar to US ICE-style systems. Civil society groups have described the shift as a xenophobic turn dressed in bureaucratic language.
The message is clear. Europe does not only want fewer migrants arriving. It wants the suffering moved somewhere else. Countries are searching for places outside Europe where rejected asylum seekers can be sent, detained or processed beyond the view of European voters.
The Libya Loop
This is where the story becomes darker.
Libya is protesting migrants. Europe is trying to send migrants away. But for years, European policy has also helped trap people in Libya. A document leaked in May 2026 confirmed the EU is expanding cooperation with Libyan coastguard forces to intercept more migrants at sea and return them. Human rights organisations have documented what those returns mean: arbitrary detention, torture, forced labour, sexual violence, and migrants sold between trafficking networks.
So the system works like this. Migrants flee war, poverty or collapse. They reach Libya. Europe funds forces that stop them crossing the sea. Libyan protesters then demand they leave. Europe builds legal pathways to send more rejected migrants outside the bloc. Every door closes, and the same person is blamed for standing outside it.
The Word That Moved From Neo-Nazi Meetings To Government Policy
One week before the Tripoli protests, the second annual Remigration Summit was held in Portugal on 30 May 2026. A former Trump Border Patrol chief who oversaw mass deportation operations, including fatal ICE shootings of American citizens, was on the programme. A speaker told the crowd to “get the freaking people who don’t belong in Europe and America out of these countries.”
The word “remigration” began circulating in neo-Nazi meetings in Germany in 2023. By 2025 it appeared on AfD election posters under the slogan “Summer, Sun, Remigration,” depicting a plane called the “Deportation Airline.” By 2026 the US Department of Homeland Security was using “remigrate” as an official term for self-deportation. Austria’s chancellor ran on a platform of “Fortress Austria.” Elected local councillors in Ireland are using the hashtag on social media.
The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism said it plainly: “By 2026, remigration is no longer a slogan. It is policy violently enforced through institutions and law enforcement.”
A Global Mood Hardens
This is not one coordinated movement. It is something more dangerous: the same political instinct appearing in different countries at the same time.
In Libya, the slogan is “Libya only for Libyans.” In South Africa, migrants are chased from homes and killed. In Germany, anti-immigration sentiment spiked 70% in racist incidents after a single high-profile crime. In Poland, anti-immigration rallies ran alongside presidential elections. In the Netherlands, a police car was set alight during anti-immigrant riots in The Hague. In Spain, far-right vigilantes attacked migrants in the streets. In Turkey, riots erupted in multiple cities and shops belonging to Syrian refugees were burned to the ground. In Japan, immigration restriction has become a defining political debate. In Britain, 185 people were arrested and 41 police officers injured during anti-immigration protests that spread through multiple cities.
The migrant is becoming the easiest person to blame. For jobs. For crime. For housing. For fear. For national decline. For governments that failed long before migrants arrived.
The Sea Keeps The Count
The Mediterranean is keeping the body count.
At least 990 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean in 2026, making it one of the deadliest starts to a year since 2014. In February, a rubber boat capsized off the Libyan coast. Fifty-three people drowned. Two of them were babies. A mother survived. She lost both her children in the water.
That is the centre of this story.
The world keeps telling migrants to leave. South Africa wants them gone. Libya wants them gone. Europe wants them sent somewhere else. The Remigration Summit wants them expelled by law. But when they try to move, the sea takes them.
This is the new global politics: push migrants out, trap them elsewhere, and pretend the human cost belongs to someone else.
By Shizza Farooqui
SOURCES: Reuters, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, Daily Maverick, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Euronews, International Organization for Migration, Statewatch, Arab News, AP, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, OHCHR, Infomigrants, Migration Policy Institute
