- Rival Libyan authorities are escalating a racist crackdown involving thousands of arrests, arbitrary detention and collective expulsions of refugees and migrants
- Xenophobic rhetoric from officials is fueling abuses and rising anti-migrant protests and vigilantism
- EU is seeking to deepen migration cooperation with these actors despite a record of grave abuses
The European Union is seeking to expand its migration cooperation with rival Libyan authorities and allied armed groups just as they have been escalating their campaign of racially discriminatory mass arrests, arbitrary detention, and unlawful collective expulsions of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants supported by xenophobic discourse, Amnesty International said today.
Over the past month, the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) and its rival eastern-based “Libyan Government,” allied to the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) armed group, in de facto control of eastern and southern Libya, have embarked on a renewed crackdown against foreign nationals arresting thousands. Xenophobic and racist statements by officials have fueled a surge of anti-migrant protests, vigilantism and hate speech online.
Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is actively moving to expand its migration cooperation with these very actors to further contain refugees and migrants in Libya, notably in eastern Libya with the LAAF despite its well documented record of crimes under international law and serious human rights abuses.
“It is abhorrent that rival Libyan authorities are uniting in the abuse of migrants and refugees, deploying racist rhetoric, ignoring refugee claims, and arbitrarily detaining thousands before expelling them including collectively at land borders. The Government of National Unity and their eastern-based rivals must immediately put an end to these abuses,” said Diana Elahawy, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
“The EU has long bankrolled migration control in Libya with its support to the Libyan Coast Guard, which has already made it complicit in horrific violations and abuses. Extending this cooperation to eastern-based armed groups with records of committing war crimes and other abuses with impunity shows a shocking disregard, not only for international law, but also for human life and dignity. The EU and its member states cannot evade responsibility while these abuses continue under their watch. They must end their complicity in crimes under international law and suspend their containment policies that trap people in cycles of abuse.”
The Government of National Unity and their eastern-based rivals must immediately cease their racist and xenophobic discourse and instruct allied entities and armed groups to put an end to the mass arbitrary detention and unlawful expulsion of refugees and migrants and instead protect them from any torture and other abuse at the hands of state and non-state agents.
Mass arrests ahead of collective and summary expulsions
The crackdown has involved sweeping arrests of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants nationwide, including in Ajdabiya, Al-Bayda, Benghazi, Derna, Sabratha, Sebha, Sirte, Tripoli, and Tobruk.
In the west, Deputy Head of the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM) Colonel Ali Daw announced that the DCIM carried out the forced eviction and arrest of dozens of migrants, including children, from informal camps in Al Serraj area of Tripoli on May 18, 2026. The eastern Tripoli branch of the DCIM has also boasted about having summarily expelled over 800 “illegal migrants,” including Sudanese nationals, from the Tripoli’s Mitiga airport since early May. Those expelled were not given the opportunity to challenge their deportation or to claim asylum.
The eastern-based DCIM announced on May 24 that between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants were detained in the east and south pending their expulsion; among them 4,500 foreign nationals, including Sudanese who have been arrested since May. In another statement on April 2, the eastern DCIM announced having warned EU officials that Libya was not a “land of settlement for Africans,” illustrating the rejection of Black Sub-Saharan migrants specifically, referred to as “Africans.”
On June 3, a DCIM representative stated that anyone who entered without documentation was an “illegal migrant” who would be “simply expelled” and that the DCIM “do not recognize refugee cards at all.”
Amnesty International spoke to a Sudanese asylum seeker arrested on June 2 by the DCIM in the eastern city of Tobruk, under LAAF control, with dozens of other Sudanese individuals based on racial profiling. He told Amnesty International that he was held for two days in a severely overcrowded hangar at the Bab Al-Zaytoun Shelter and Deportation Centre in Tobruk before managing to secure his freedom. He described sharing the hangar with at least 1,000 people, including Sudanese, Egyptian, and Bangladeshi nationals, alongside 200 people who had been intercepted at sea.
Guards ignored his request for insulin and to claim asylum. He witnessed officials taking away 400 people from the detention center. He later learned from another Sudanese asylum seeker, who contacted him from Port Sudan (north-east Sudan), that they were forced into a plane in Benghazi and expelled.
Amnesty International spoke to a Black Sierra Leonean living in Tripoli who was arrested and detained twice in the past two weeks. On June 2, the DCIM arrested him and other Black migrants from a Tripoli street before transferring him to an unidentified detention facility in western Libya under the Western Mountain Military Region armed formation. Guards beat him daily for four days until friends helped him pay a ransom to secure his release. He said thousands of people were detained at this facility including Sudanese, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Algerians and Tunisians. On June 11, DCIM arrested him again from a taxi in Tripoli; before transferring him to an unidentified facility in Tripoli, where he was detained for two days and beaten, before he paid another ransom.
Past documentation into migrant arrests indicate that militias, armed groups and security forces in Libya have particularly targeted Black and racialized individuals – which accounts for the majority of migrant populations in Libya – and have been motivated by xenophobia and racism.
Officially endorsed racism enabling anti-migrant protest movements
Between June 1 and 10, 2026, a barrage of statements and decisions rejecting the “settlement” of migrants in Libya was issued by the GNU’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the House of Representatives, Libya’s parliament allied to the eastern-based authorities, as well as the eastern-based “Libyan Government” (GNS), and LAAF.
The House of Representatives stressed the need to protect Libya’s “demographic and cultural identity” and referred to Law 24 of August 2023 which mandates imprisonment and expulsion for anyone intending “settlement” in Libya, whether through regular or irregular means. Saddam Haftar, LAAF’s second-in-command, announced an extensive campaign of expulsions. Amnesty International has previously documented collective expulsions of migrants and refugees, as well as unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment, rape and sexual violence, by the Tariq Ben Zeyad (TBZ) armed group, then under Saddam Haftar’s de facto control.
On June 8, GNU Minister of Interior Emad al-Trabulsi stated that the authorities were moving forward with a national expulsion program under which thousands have already been deported summarily. Emad al-Trabelsi previously headed the notorious Public Security Agency militia which has been involved in horrific crimes against refugees and migrants and which has also participated in the current crackdown.
“No to settlement” movement
The renewed crackdown from authorities has occurred amid a surge in xenophobic protests in Tripoli under the slogan “No to settlement” and in xenophobic and racist social media posts.
Since April, hundreds of protesters have been gathering on a weekly basis in the Janzour neighborhood, western Tripoli, where UN offices are located. Blaming migrants, referred to as “infiltrators,” for Libya’s economic woes, they have demanded the expulsion of the UN Refugee Agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), from Libya, while also expressing their opposition to migration cooperation with the EU aimed at containing foreign nationals in Libya. Alongside the DCIM and local municipalities, anti-migrant protesters have called on Libyans employing or housing irregular migrants to dismiss and evict them and to report anyone who has not done so.
On June 4, a protest in front of the UNHCR office in Tripoli ended with demonstrators piling mounds of sand at the gates and breaching the exterior gate of the neighboring compound of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), which expressed concern over the spread of misinformation and disinformation regarding the UN’s work in Libya. Libyan security forces present at the scene failed to intervene. On June 8, Emad al-Trabelsi, GNU’s Minister of Interior, met with “No to settlement” activists and publicly affirmed his support for their demands.
Since May 15, videos began circulating online showing Black people being chased, taunted, hit and otherwise physically abused by Libyans notably in Tripoli and Zintan, indicating that the anti-migrant discourse from the state and non-state actors was enabling further racist abuse with impunity.
EU complicity in systematic violations
Leaked documents, media reports and multiple social media publications from the LAAF, the EU Naval Force Mediterranean Operation Irini, and the EU Delegation in Libya in May confirm that the bloc is seeking to expand its migration cooperation with Libya, notably by establishing a Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, which is under LAAF control.
This comes after the Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) shot at a Sea-Watch NGO rescue boat on May 11, in international waters north of Tripoli, the third such incident since August 2025. The Libyan authorities have not released information on any investigations. On May 6, the European Ombudsman opened an inquiry into the European Commission’s failure to release documents related to one of the shootings.
Background
The current crisis represents a continuation of ongoing and well-documented widespread and systematic violations and abuses of refugees and migrants’ rights in Libya, actively enabled by cooperation with the EU and its Member States.
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