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At 19 years old, Bakary Jaiju made an unthinkable choice: leave behind his young wife and infant child in the Gambia, board an overcrowded wooden dinghy, and cross the deadly Atlantic Ocean to Europe in search of a future he could never build at home. For seven terrifying days at sea, the gravity of his gamble sank in with every passing hour. Food and fresh water dwindled to almost nothing, and sleep became a luxury no one dared afford—one wrong move, and a sleeper would tumble into the churning open water.

“I decided to go, whether I survive or I die, because I want my family to be in a good condition,” Jaiju recalled from his new home in Tenerife, where he finally landed late last year after surviving the crossing. He counts himself among the extraordinarily lucky. In the months since his arrival, hundreds of other migrants have perished attempting the same treacherous journey, their stories ending before they ever reach Europe’s shores.

This week, the perilous plight of these migrants and the harrowing survival stories of those who make it will take center stage, as Pope Leo XIV kicks off a visit to Spain’s Canary Islands starting Thursday. The Pope’s focus on migration stands in deliberate contrast to the rising rhetoric of a migration “crisis” and “ideological invasion” that has gained traction across much of Europe.

Recent data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirms that overall migrant sea arrivals to Spain have dropped sharply this year, a decline largely attributed to increased EU-funded interception operations off the coast of West Africa. Even so, thousands of desperate people continue to attempt the crossing, and hundreds continue to lose their lives to the Atlantic. During his trip to Gran Canaria and Tenerife, the Pope will push for expanded “safe and legal pathways” for migration, while calling for a deeply humane approach and a “respectful welcome” for those who have already risked everything to reach European borders. He will also honor those who never made it, dropping a wreath of flowers into the ocean off Gran Canaria to commemorate entire boatloads of migrants that vanished without a trace.

For Jaiju, survival was only the first hurdle. The 160-person boat that carried him—including dozens of women and children—managed to evade the heightened naval patrols off the coasts of Mauritania and Senegal, only to run out of fuel hundreds of miles from shore. They were eventually spotted and rescued off the small Spanish island of El Hierro. After that, Jaiju spent three freezing, grueling months in a migrant reception camp on Tenerife, before he connected with a local integration project that helps him learn Spanish and navigate the process of securing legal residency.

The project is the brainchild of Padre Pepe, an outgoing local parish priest who eschews a traditional clerical collar for jeans and checked shirts. He noticed a growing gap in support: local authorities only provided care for underage migrants until they turned 18, after which young people were left completely on their own. “But the streets will eat you up, young people are like carrion there,” Padre Pepe explained. Today, his Good Samaritan Foundation provides housing and vocational training for roughly 170 young migrant men, and the priest argues that local labor markets are more than capable of absorbing these workers. “The labour market could absorb all these people, there is huge demand,” he said. Questioning the increasingly hardline attitudes toward migration across the continent, he added: “It’s hard for me to understand why the human heart is so hard. If we do it well, integrate people well, there is nothing bad in it at all. Quite the contrary.”

Jaiju’s path to legal status has been smoothed by a controversial one-time policy from Spain’s ruling Socialist government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The administration is currently allowing hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who arrived before December 2025 to apply for residence and work permits to regularize their status. Padre Pepe’s team is working around the clock to help as many eligible migrants as possible submit their paperwork before the application deadline closes.

The policy has drawn fierce condemnation from Spanish opposition groups. The conservative Popular Party has labeled the move “irresponsible” and out of step with EU immigration frameworks, while far-right party Vox has decried it as enabling an “invasion” that will overwhelm the country’s public health system, housing market, and security infrastructure. For the Socialist government, however, the move balances humanitarian principle with practical economic reality: like much of the rest of Europe, Spain faces an aging, shrinking native population and a growing gap in available workers.

That demand is already visible on the ground in the Canary Islands. At the Domingo Alonso Group, a car dealership and service center in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, managers struggled for months to fill open positions for bodywork painters and panel beaters, unable to recruit local workers. The company partnered with a local government scheme to hire young migrants after they age out of state care, and today the firm employs roughly 30 migrant workers. Initially, the move drew intense backlash online, with critics accusing migrants of “stealing” local jobs, said human resources manager Diana del Molino Rodriguez. “It was a really hard thing to do because immigration was not something seen as positive. Nobody was looking at migrants like persons,” she explained. Today, the program is a success: one of their workers, 19-year-old Tiene Lama from Ivory Coast, earns enough to send hundreds of euros home to his family each month. Dozens of local businesses, including major hotel chains that rely on the islands’ booming tourism industry, have now joined the scheme.

As Pope Leo works to shift the narrative around migration toward greater compassion, a new EU migration pact is set to take effect this week that will further tighten Europe’s external border controls. The new framework is designed to make it easier to detain and deport migrants who arrive irregularly by sea. For desperate young people like Jaiju, who are already willing to risk death for a better future, policy experts say the new restrictions will do little to deter crossings. Human rights organizations warn the new rules will create new barriers for asylum seekers seeking to have their claims heard.

The sharpest criticism of the new pact comes from local officials in the Canary Islands, where the policy will be implemented directly. “We have no-one to work in the hotels, drive our buses or work in construction; we don’t have masons or mechanics,” said Francis Candil, the Canary Islands’ deputy minister for welfare. “What we need is a real migration policy that means people from African countries don’t have to risk their lives but can come to Europe and have options for work. Instead, we have Europe trying to protect itself behind walls – and to expel people.”

BARCELONA, Spain — On the final leg of his week-long official visit to Spain, Pope Leo XIV traveled Thursday to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa, to honor a long-held wish of his predecessor Pope Francis and shine a global spotlight on the dangerous journey that hundreds of thousands of migrants undertake each year to reach European shores. Positioned far closer to West Africa than to mainland Spain’s Iberian Peninsula, the Canaries have emerged as one of the most pivotal entry points for irregular migration to the European Union, making it a natural epicenter for debates over migration policy across the continent.

During his two-day visit, the pontiff scheduled a series of engagements: private meetings with migrants who have arrived in the archipelago in recent months, discussions with representatives of Catholic Church outreach groups and humanitarian organizations that provide life-saving aid and integration support for new arrivals, and a solemn commemoration at a site that has become a global symbol of the world’s failure to protect vulnerable migrants: Arguineguin Port, infamously dubbed the “dock of shame” after a 2020 crisis exposed inhumane conditions for displaced people.

In 2020, a sudden spike in migrant crossings to the Canary Islands overwhelmed local authorities, forcing thousands of new arrivals to camp in open-air makeshift facilities on the port’s dock. For weeks, migrants had access only to basic blankets, with no functioning shower facilities, limited access to food and medical care, and no proper legal support for people seeking international asylum. Many were detained far longer than the 3-day maximum detention period permitted under Spanish law, triggering national outcry. Spain’s national ombudsman eventually ordered the camp closed and all migrants relocated, leaving a permanent stain on the country’s immigration policy reputation.

Pope Francis, who centered much of his papacy on upholding the biblical call to “welcome the stranger” and made refugee rights a defining policy priority, had long planned to visit the Canary Islands to stand in solidarity with migrants after the 2020 crisis, but he never had the opportunity to make the trip before stepping down. Pope Leo, the first American pope, has carried forward this commitment, emerging as a vocal critic of hardline migration policies both in his home country, where he has pushed back against former President Donald Trump’s mass deportation crackdown, and across the globe.

Earlier in his Spanish trip, Pope Leo made history by becoming the first pope ever to address the Spanish Parliament, where he delivered a rousing defense of migrant dignity that earned him a seven-minute standing ovation from lawmakers. “The moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to accompany, protect and love those lives that are most fragile,” he told the chamber, extending his framing of inherent human dignity to unborn children, the elderly, and people living with terminal illness. Beyond his call for welcome, the pope has pushed for coordinated global action to dismantle human smuggling networks, establish safe, legal migration pathways, and invest in economic development in migrants’ countries of origin to give people the choice to build stable lives at home rather than undertaking dangerous cross-border journeys.

Spain’s current Socialist-led government has carved out a unique stance on migration relative to many other Western nations, bucking the hardline trend that has taken hold across much of Europe and the United States. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has openly defended liberal immigration policies on both humanitarian and economic grounds, pointing to Spain’s rapidly aging population and chronically low birth rate, which have left critical gaps in the national workforce that immigrant workers can fill. Earlier this year, the administration launched an ambitious regularization campaign that will grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants currently living and working in the country.

Migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands hit a peak of nearly 47,000 people in 2024, but numbers have dropped dramatically in recent years, with just over 2,000 arrivals recorded in the first four months of 2026. Following his visit to the Canaries, Pope Leo will continue his tour of key migration epicenters next month, when he plans to spend U.S. Independence Day on the Italian island of Lampedusa — another major entry point for migrants crossing from North Africa. The visit will echo Pope Francis’ first official trip outside Rome back in 2013, when he traveled to Lampedusa to toss a wreath into the Mediterranean Sea in honor of thousands of migrants who died attempting the crossing, and coined his iconic phrase decrying the “globalization of indifference” that allows the world to turn a blind eye to migrant suffering.

This coverage from the Associated Press is supported through a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding provided by Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP retains sole editorial responsibility for all content.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – A brutal street stabbing committed by an asylum-seeking Sudanese man in Northern Ireland has ignited two consecutive nights of violent, arson-fueled rioting, stoked by preexisting anti-migrant rhetoric that has been spreading across parts of the United Kingdom and Europe. The 30-year-old suspect, Hadi Alodid, made his first court appearance at Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, where he faced charges including attempted murder, a separate count of threatening to kill, and illegal possession of a bladed weapon.

According to law enforcement testimony delivered during the hearing, Alodid carried out the attack with a common kitchen knife, leaving his primary victim, Stephen Ogilvie, permanently blinded in the left eye with deep lacerations across the head, face, and back. After the stabbing, while Alodid received medical treatment for a self-inflicted hand wound, he allegedly threatened to kill an attending radiologist. A detective testifying in court shared that Alodid told hospital staff, “I’ve killed someone, I don’t know if they are dead.” To date, investigators have not confirmed a clear motive for the attack, though they have explicitly ruled out terrorism as a driving factor. Alodid declined to secure legal representation through an Arabic interpreter, entered no plea during the Wednesday hearing, and was ordered to remain in custody pending further proceedings.

The first wave of unrest broke out within hours of the attack on Tuesday, when groups of masked rioters took to Belfast’s streets. The mob set fire to multiple residential properties that they claimed housed migrant families, torched a city bus, and launched a barrage of rocks and other projectiles at responding police officers. Firefighters were forced to carry out dramatic rescue operations to pull trapped residents out of burning homes. By the end of the two days of violence, more than 20 local residents had been left homeless, including African migrant communities already settled in the area. Anselme Shima, a Congolese native who has lived in Belfast for nearly a decade, described the chaos as deeply traumatic. “I’ve lived on my street for almost 10 years, I have a good relationship with my neighbors, but last night was a horrific one,” Shima said. “We don’t know what to do. I’m scared. Seeing this, I’m wondering if I’m next.” Police deployed water cannons to disperse the rioters, who tore bricks and stone chunks from local garden walls and patios to hurl at officers.

Senior political leaders from both blocs of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing regional government have unanimously condemned the outbreak of violence. First Minister Michelle O’Neill of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin labeled the unrest “thuggery,” echoing widespread cross-party rejection of the rioting.

The current unrest in Belfast mirrors a pattern of anti-migrant violence that has followed recent high-profile stabbing cases across the U.K. over the past two years. Most notably, three young girls were killed in a 2024 stabbing attack at a dance class near Liverpool, which sparked widespread rioting across England and parts of Northern Ireland after false social media claims misidentified the underage suspect as a Muslim asylum seeker. Even after police confirmed the suspect was a British citizen born in Wales, raised by Rwandan Christian parents, violence remained centered on migrant and Muslim communities. The Belfast riots also come just one week after violent clashes between protesters and police in Southampton, which erupted following the sentencing of a man convicted of fatally stabbing university student Henry Nowak.

In the Southampton case, the stabbing, carried out by Vickrum Digwa, exposed deep tensions over policing and immigration. Judge William Mousley found that Digwa, who used an illegal long dagger after initially carrying a traditional Sikh ceremonial knife, misled police by falsely claiming Nowak had attacked him first, resulting in a life prison sentence. Outrage among far-right groups grew after it was revealed that responding officers, called to the scene of a reported racist assault, misidentified Nowak as the perpetrator. Officers dismissed his dying pleas that he had been stabbed and could not breathe, handcuffing him as he lost consciousness. Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party, seized on the case to promote the far-right talking point of “two-tier policing” – the unsubstantiated claim that British policing systems systematically favor ethnic minorities over white residents. While government officials and police leaders have repeatedly denied the existence of such bias, many independent analysts note that multiple major studies, including a 2022 report on London’s Metropolitan Police, the U.K.’s largest force, have confirmed the force is plagued by widespread institutional racism that disadvantages ethnic minority communities.

Far-right and anti-immigration activists across social media have actively organized these post-stabbing protests, with prominent international figures amplifying their rhetoric to stoke division. High-profile far-right British activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known by his pseudonym Tommy Robinson, has been a key voice calling protesters to action. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, owner of the social platform X, has amplified the outrage over Nowak’s killing, posting more than 100 times about the case around the time of Digwa’s trial and offering to fund a private prosecution of the local police force. U.S. Vice President JD Vance also waded into the debate, posting on X that the killing was proof of “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushed back sharply against these foreign interventions, criticizing outside actors “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”

The unrest in Belfast reflects a broader, years-long surge in anti-immigrant sentiment across the U.K. and much of Western Europe, fueled by ongoing political debates over asylum policy, the steady arrival of asylum seekers via small-boat crossings across the English Channel, and rising public pressure on housing and public services.

Some British anti-immigration political figures have blamed the open border policy between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for allowing Alodid to enter the region. Alodid reportedly traveled from Paris to Dublin before moving north into Northern Ireland, a path made possible by the free movement policy that has been a core pillar of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal that ended 30 years of sectarian conflict known as “The Troubles” that killed nearly 3,600 people. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this man should not have been in this country,” Farage said Wednesday. “He entered the country illegally. And is it any surprise that people in Belfast and elsewhere are scared?”