A migrant smuggler has boasted that there is nothing European leaders can do to stop people from making illegal and highly dangerous journeys to the continent. The criminal insisted that “not even the Prophet himself could prevent the Harka”—the name given to illegal immigration in Tunisia.
Twenty-nine-year-old Hassan (not his real name) has made a lot of money through what he described as his “illegal travel agency.” At the top of a chain in which a number of “coordinators” collect “customers” from Tunisia and send them off in small boats, he has played an important role in the significant rise of illegal crossings to Italy, increasing four-fold in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period the year before.
