Overnight from Monday to Tuesday (September 11-12) authorities said hundreds of people arrived on Lampedusa in around 33 boats. At least ten more boats were expected to land or be brought in on Tuesday.

A video on the Italian news agency ANSA, posted on September 12, shows a stream of inflatable RHIB boats headed towards the harbor on Lampedusa. The migrants on board can be heard cheering, seemingly happy to have arrived safely.

More boats were "queueing up" to dock in the port, so many arriving within a few hours that they were "difficult to count" ANSA reported. Additional boats were said to have been spotted on the horizon. By around midday on Tuesday the online news site Italia Notizie (Italian news) put the latest numbers of arrivals since Monday at 1,993.

Only a few of the boats arriving were of the dangerous soldered metal type, reported Italia Notizie. It said some of the people on board had told the Italian authorities that their engines had been stolen by "pirates" part way across the Mediterranean.

Potential shipwreck, around 40 missing

The rescue yacht Nadir, operated by the organization Resqship, picked up 39 migrants on September 11, after following their boat for about five hours. Once their engine broke down and the waves increased, the crew of the Nadir said they were forced to take "39 severely dehydrated people" on board the ship.

Resqship also said that those rescued reported having seen another shipwreck, of a boat carrying around 40 people.

The latest boats to arrive on or near Lampedusa followed around 602 arriving in a space of 24 hours from Sunday to Monday, reported Sky News TG24. Each small boat to arrive in that window was carrying between 36 and 50 people, according to the news channel. The majority of those on board came originally from Sudan, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Somalia, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Transfers to Sicily and mainland Italy

Sky said that Italian authorities were now reporting at least 2,000 people in the first reception center, or so-called 'hotspot' on Lampedusa, which only has capacity for around 400.

The authorities have been transferring groups of around 200 migrants from the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa towards Sicily and other ports on the Italian mainland. Sky reported that around 600 people would be taken by ferry to the Sicilian port of Porto Empedocole. An Italian coastguard ship, the Diciotti, was also expected to be deployed to "speed up and increase" the numbers being transferred.

According to Italian Interior Ministry figures updated on September 11, more than 116,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by boat since the beginning of the year.

Towards the end of last week, the numbers of those embarking on a Mediterranean crossing from ports in North Africa had dwindled following a period of rough weather in the central Mediterranean.

Most of the people who arrived this week told the authorities that they had set off from Tunisia, in and around the port of Sfax, which has become the most important port of departure for those hoping to cross the central Mediterranean towards Italy this year.

2023 arrivals increased by 84%

Italy’s Special Commissioner for the "Migrant Emergency", Prefect Valerio Valenti, said during a debate on Monday (September 11) that the number of arrivals to Italy this year was "up by 84% compared with the number of arrivals during 2022."

"We have moved from a phase of 'normal management' to 'extraordinary management,'" said Valenti, explaining why the Italian government declared a state of emergency regarding the migrant situation in April this year. He added that the state of emergency also took into account that the arrivals had been concentrated on the tiny island of Lampedusa, which was unable to cope, according to the Italian news agency ADNKronos.

Valenti said he thought the Italian authorities had managed the situation well and that the Italian Red Cross, which now runs the first reception center on Lampedusa on behalf of the Italian government, was running things well.

Commenting on the proportion of migrants arriving in Italy who are unaccompanied minors, Valenti said their number was on the rise, reported ADNKronos. Around one in nine arrivals are unaccompanied minors, and of those, about one third are under 14 years of age, he said.

One of the most worrying phenomena, added Valenti, is the arrival of very small children and even babies who are sent across with relatives or even people that their parents barely know. This kind of exploitation of children was "unacceptable," he said.

Italy criticizes Dublin regulation

The Italian government has long criticized the so-called Dublin regulation, a law that requires Italy to take back migrants who have traveled onto other EU countries, after first arriving in Italy, and to process their asylum claims. Valenti said that most of the migrants arriving didn’t want to stay in Italy but hoped to join family members in other countries in northern Europe. The Dublin regulation was putting an unfair burden on Italy and making the country "a sort of prison" for migrants and asylum seekers hoping to move on elsewhere, Valenti said.

Valenti admitted that the process of integration and the time taken to process asylum claims and protection procedures could be improved in Italy. He told the audience in the Sicilian capital Palermo that he hoped that Italy could work towards becoming a "truly multicultural society," by making sure that the whole community held "shared values."

According to ADNKronos, the Prefect confirmed that the Italian authorities had been transferring an average of 650 migrants a day from the first reception center on Lampedusa. He praised the coast guard and the Italian police forces for helping in this process and in the numerous rescues carried out within the Italian search and rescue zone in the Central Mediterranean.

Unaccompanied minors and small children

"Today a migrant doesn’t stay in the hotspot on Lampedusa longer than 36 hours," ADNKronos quoted Valenti as saying. He denied frequent media reports that the hotspot had ever been "on the point of collapse," saying the center was being managed in a balanced and professional way, with more than 100 Red Cross personnel working there.

Also taking part in the debate was the head of the Catholic Church’s organization that works closely with migrants and others in need, Centro Astalli. Father Ripamonti, the head of the organization, cautioned the Italian media on how they report on migration, saying that the narrative had started to make the Italian public see migrants as something problematic, and in some cases as "the enemy" who "commits crimes" or could even be "a terrorist."

Ripamonti said these media reports prevented people from seeing migrants as fellow human beings and blocked their interest in helping them.