Moktar Diallo left Mali in 2015, dreaming of reaching Europe by boat from Mauritania to Spain's Canary Islands.

A decade later, Diallo is stuck working long hours making bricks in Mauritania's coastal capital Nouakchott, and trying to dodge a police crackdown that has reduced the flow of irregular dinghies making the around 600-mile (970 km) crossing, which can take up to eight days.

Migrants and human rights groups report a significant rise in police activity in Mauritania after the West African country signed a pact with the European Union early last year aimed at curbing irregular migration.

Mauritanian security forces have intercepted about 13,500 boats headed for the Canaries since the start of 2024 and arrivals on the archipelago were down 59% in 2025 through to October from a year earlier, Spain's Interior Ministry said.

Meanwhile, expulsions from Mauritania almost doubled to 28,125 people in the first six months of 2025 compared to all of 2024, according to information provided to Human Rights Watch by the Mauritanian government.

Diallo said a police crackdown began after Ramadan in late March this year. There are no boats leaving now, he said, and many people he knows have been rounded up and sent back to Mali.

"Since the police started turning people back, everything has gone wrong," the 42-year-old said.

Human rights groups say many migrants are being deported without due process, deposited with little money at the Malian or Senegalese borders, where transport links are scarce.

Mauritanian authorities did not respond to a request for comment.


The EU has struck deals with transit countries

The crackdown follows three visits by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to Nouakchott in the past two years after arrivals to the Canaries from West Africa reached a record 46,843 in 2024, and Mauritania became the main point of departure.

The number of boats arriving from Mauritania in the year through to December 16 was down 61% to 133 from the same period last year, the Red Cross said.
The pact with Mauritania is another example, along with deals with Tunisia and Egypt, of a strategy of policing European borders from transit countries.

In exchange, Mauritania received a payment of 210 million euros ($247 million) for managing migration, humanitarian aid for refugees, and for boosting employment and entrepreneurship, the Commission said. It was the largest yet of financial contributions dating back two decades, when the EU and Mauritania first began cooperating on migration.

Malian migrants work at night, share a hut with others

Diallo works 15 days at a time on a site on Nouakchott's outskirts. By day, he and three other men sleep in a wooden hut with a corrugated iron roof on beds made from the bricks they make at night to avoid the stifling heat.

With police on the prowl, he usually only visits his wife and three children in the centre when escorted there by his Mauritanian boss, he said.
He still dreams of Europe, but a place on a small boat to the Canaries costs about $2,700 and he earns just $5-$7 a day. Returning to Mali isn't an option either, he said.



Moktar Diallo, 42, poses after a day's work near the hut where he lives with three other colleagues on workdays