Reports suggest that over 400 sub-Saharan African migrants may have been expelled from Tunisia to its eastern borders with Libya since the beginning of May.

Footage posted to the X page of the organization Refugees in Libya, founded by South Sudanese migrant David Yambio, depicts a group of people walking in the desert.

According to Refugees in Libya, the footage was recorded on May 2 and posted to the organization’s X page on May 4.

'Still following this group'

Refugees in Libya said the group of migrants explained they walked to the city of Bousalem in northern Tunisia but were expelled.

Migrants involved "had to sleep in the woods without enough to drink and eat. Children shivered all night long because they had no covers," the organization said.

On Monday (May 6), the Qatari-backed news organization Al Jazeera reported that Tunisian authorities cleared migrant and refugee camps outside UN migration agency IOM offices in Tunis.

Pictures of the aftermath of the clearance were posted by the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP).

Clearance of makeshift camps in Tunis

In the early hours of Friday morning (May 3), "police swept into both camps, plus a protest site outside the offices of the UNHCR … clearing them of the shelters erected there and bundling the men, women and children onto municipal buses to the Algerian border," Al Jazeera reports.

Also read: Italy's Meloni talks migration in Tunisia

Al Jazeera also quoted Refugees in Libya's claim that the group cleared from Tunis were left near the border town of Jendouba "where they were left without food or water to fend for themselves."

These recent instances mirror reports of similar events throughout much of 2023.

'Conditions are very, very bad'

It is difficult to confirm the number of people who may have been subject to the reported clearances and expulsions.

Up to tens of thousands of migrants could be living in makeshift tents in fields around port towns like Sfax while they wait to board boats towards Europe, Al Jazeera reports.

Also read: 17 Tunisian migrants missing as reported deaths reach record high

One man, a 37-year-old from Ghana named Richard, told Al Jazeera that conditions in the field where he was camping were "dire."

"Conditions there are bad. Very, very bad," explained Richard. "I am sick, you can see. My body hurts. I have to go to hospital but they give you no assistance."

Richard and his friend Solomon told Al Jazeera that the fear of police raids in Tunisia is constant. The two men say the authorities have begun to fly drones above their makeshift camps, and that during one raid in Sfax, police burnt tents and fired tear gas to disperse the migrants.

Richard showed Al Jazeera reporters a video of this raid.

"I don’t know why they did it," he said.

Kidnapping becoming more commonplace, say aid organizations

Since the end of 2023, some migrants have told reporters that kidnapping is growing more common in Tunisia.

Three Sierra Leoneans claimed in posts on X in early April that they were held prisoner by an unknown group of French-speaking people who they guessed may have come from Cameroon.

"They beat us with plastic pipes. One, he gets a bottle and burns it, so the plastic falls on us," said one of the group, 29-year-old Hassan, reported Al Jazeera.

The practice was denounced in March by a group of NGOs, including the legal aid group Lawyers without Borders. They said the rise in kidnapping in Tunisia was a direct outcome of official attitudes towards migration, reported Al Jazeera.

Abu Dhabi-backed National News reported on May 7 that Tunisian President Kais Saied told a meeting of the Tunisian National Security Council that he had expelled "about 400 sub-Saharan African migrants from its eastern border."

President Saied claims plots to 'resettle migrants in Tunisia' need combatting

National News reported that President Saied did not specify exactly where the migrants had been sent.

"Tunisia will not accept to be a place of settlement for these people [migrants] nor will it accept to be a transit destination," he reportedly said.

On Monday, President Saied met Libyan Interior Minister Major General Imad Trabelsi to discuss the issue of migration.

According to the Tunisian press agency TAP, Saied told Trabelsi migration was "worsening day by day" and could only be solved through close cooperation of all North African countries.

Also read: Tunisia intercepts 70,000 migrants since January

At the beginning of April, Tunisian human rights organization FTDES confirmed that attacks against migrants in Tunisia, which started worsening in February 2023, are "continuing."

The FTDES report claimed that "systematic violations and racist and xenophobic campaigns continued and were targeted in particular against sub-Saharan African migrants."

Tunisian National Guard accused of 'arbitrary displacements'

The FTDES report also noted that along with intercepting migrants at sea, the Tunisian National Maritime Guard had also been detected carrying out "arbitrary displacements of migrants on land, without paying any attention to their humanitarian situation or to the accords signed and ratified by Tunisia."

The report noted that the Tunisian authorities were carrying these types of displacement operations out in several parts of the country, most notably in El Aamra, El Jédériya and Kasserine "where the situation is the most alarming and worrying."