For the weary Kurdish family and the young people from Eritrea, Mali and Ivory Coast outside Ventimiglia train station, life is like Groundhog Day, an itinerary invariably made up of repeated attempts to cross the border into France and of scrambling for food and finding somewhere to sleep.
The northern Italian coastal town, popular with tourists for its Friday market, has been a perennial waiting room for migrants for more than a decade, most of whom have made the perilous journey to Europe by boat, landing in southern Italy before making their way north.
But as a conservative coalition promises to clamp down on mass immigration as it charts its path to victory in general elections on 25 September, a fresh humanitarian crisis is playing out in Ventimiglia, a situation exacerbated by a combination of careless policies from both sides of the political spectrum, and dysfunctional European measures.
Ibrahim, from Mali, said he had tried to enter France four times, twice by train and twice by walking along a motorway, only to be sent back by French police. “He’s tried it 23 times,” he said, pointing to his friend from Ivory Coast. “All we want is to be able to live.”
The pair have been sleeping in cardboard boxes outside the train station. Others bed down for the night among piles of rubbish under a bridge by the Roia River, in the park or on the beach.
The migrants arriving in Ventimiglia – about 100 a day, according to charity workers – have been left homeless since a council made up of the coalition of two far-right parties, Brothers of Italy and the League, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, elected in 2019 and heading for national power, fulfilled its promise of closing the city’s only shelter, called Roia.
That council, however, was not made to last, with Ventimiglia rudderless since June after the mayor, Gaetano Scullino, an independent backed by the three parties, was forced to resign after losing a confidence vote.
By then, enough damage had been done, with Scullino also closing off a fountain used by immigrants and homeless people to wash.
The only source of food and healthcare assistance comes from charity associations including the Church-run Caritas.
“The situation has got so much worse here,” said Christian Papini, who runs the Caritas centre close to Ventimiglia train station. “People have been left on the street, there is nothing close to hospitality here.”
Twenty-seven people are estimated to have died while trying to enter France since 2017, either by drowning, being hit by a car or walking along the so-called “passage of death”, a mountain trail used by Italian Jews fleeing Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime during the second world war.
Since French authorities tightened border controls in 2015, French police have been accused of using aggressive tactics to ward off people trying to cross the border. In June, an Egyptian man died after being shot in the head by a French officer. The man had reportedly been travelling in a van that rammed its way through an immigration checkpoint in a French border town.
“You also have people who beat immigrants up, or steal money from them, pretending to take them to France only to leave them stranded at the border or elsewhere,” said Papini.
The situation wasn’t much better when Ventimiglia was in the hands of the leftwing mayor, Enrico Ioculano, who banned residents from feeding migrants.
“He did this ‘decorum’ decree which was in place for several years, with the excuse that some citizens might have tried to poison the food,” said Delia Bonuomo, who ran Bar Hobbit, a bar that was a solidarity hub for immigrants until closing in December last year. “The truth was he didn’t want the issue of migrants in the city. Some of us carried on giving food all the same, risking getting fined.”
Bonuomo, nicknamed “Mamma Africa”, opened her bar to migrants at the height of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015, providing them with food, clothes and a place to wash. But as growing numbers of people queued outside, the initiative didn’t please nearby businesses or her Italian customers, who stopped frequenting the bar, a catalyst for its closure. Bonuomo has also been spat at in the street by people blaming her for the crisis.
Another victim of his own humanity was Father Rito Alvarez, a priest who helped hundreds of people passing through a shelter set up at Saint Antonio church until Ventimiglia authorities closed it down in 2017. Alvarez was later transferred to a mountain parish, where he wouldn’t have the opportunity of helping migrants.
“We helped many vulnerable people but because of the politics, we were forced to close,” said Rito. “The problem was there was no alternative, apart from the Roia shelter, but then that closed too, leaving people abandoned.”
Rito said he was worried about the upcoming election, recalling the hardline measures introduced by Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League, during his stint as interior minister in 2018-19. The measures included blocking migrant rescue ships, closing shelters and stripping people of two-year permits that had enabled them to work.
Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni, the Brothers of Italy leader who could become prime minister, has called for the navy to turn people back to Africa.
“These are all worrying policies, but we have always said that the immigration crisis is not only a national one, but a European one,” added Rito.
Several protests have been held in Ventimiglia calling for France to open its border, while charity associations have long called for the Dublin agreement, a controversial EU measure that stipulates that those applying for asylum must do so in their first country of arrival, to be scrapped.
“The right says it will close off ports, while it was the left that made an inhumane agreement with Libya to keep migrants there,” said Papini. “Neither side has a desire to resolve it, so the only way to do so would be to get rid of the Dublin agreement and oblige France to open its border.”
