Individuals deported and abandoned in the desert, Assamaka, 20 July 2025 (Picture: Alarme Phone Sahara)
After a wave of mass deportations attracted the attention of the Nigerien and international media in April 2025, deportation convoys from Algeria to the desert on the Niger border, near the village of Assamaka, continued throughout 2025.
The Alarm Phone Sahara team in Assamaka documented at least 34,236 people deported from Algeria in official and unofficial convoys between January and December 2025.
At the same time, it is certain that the actual number far exceeds the documented figures, given that in several cases, local structures were unable to record the number of people taken away in these convoys.
The conditions in which people are deported by the Algerian police and gendarmerie remain precarious and painful. This is especially true for people dropped off in the desert at Point Zero, 15 km from Assamaka, by ‘unofficial’ convoys, but also for Nigerien citizens, most of whom are loaded onto ‘official’ deportation convoys.
The Algerian security forces spare no one. Regularly, many women and children, often even babies, are among those deported. Sometimes this even affects people with disabilities, such as the blind. Many people arrive with injuries and trauma inflicted by the security forces.
The collaboration between Maghreb countries in the fight against people on the move, encouraged by EU Member States, and the chain deportations from Tunisia and Algeria are one of the reasons why, in 2024 and 2025, even more people were put on deportation convoys than in previous years.
The Alarme Phone Sahara team provides practical and tireless solidarity on the ground: they travel by tricycle to Point Zero to pick up weakened and injured people who have been abandoned in the desert. They provide them with first aid in the form of water and food kits. They take them to the infirmary….“
