Desert Dumps Investigation Reshapes Europe’s Migration Debate

The investigation Desert Dumps sent shockwaves through European politics. Within a day of publication, EU officials were questioned at the European Commission’s daily press briefing, the story was raised in the debate between the lead candidates for Commission president, and it even reached the UN Secretary-General’s podium in New York. Months later, diplomats in Brussels were still fielding questions about how European money fuels migrant expulsions in North Africa.

The investigation by our grantees IRPI, Lighthouse Reports, and international partners — including The Washington Post, Le Monde and El País — exposed how EU-funded forces in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia rounded up tens of thousands of Black migrants and abandoned them in the desert. Survivors described being chased through city streets, detained, or intercepted at sea before being driven to remote border zones without food or water. One Cameroonian man recalled walking nine days through Tunisia’s desert with pregnant women and children after being left near the Algerian border.

The impact spread quickly. The story was cited in research by the Mixed Migration Centre and Euromed Rights, discussed at Sciences Po and Queen Mary University, and presented to the European Economic and Social Committee.

By September 2025, Desert Dumps had entered Europe’s political vocabulary, was shortlisted for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, and won the IJ4EU Impact Award for its contribution to accountability journalism.

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