Sicily has become a major new weigh station for migrants from Africa and the Middle East desperate to start new lives in Europe.
Since the alarming deaths off the island of Lampedusa in 2013, the influx to Sicily has soared. There, they wait to see if their asylum applications will be accepted.
Penniless, without documentation, hopes exhausted and futures dark, they felt compelled to risk their lives at sea.
Many of the migrants are in their early 20s.
Gambian migrant Lamin Beyai, age 20, said: “I was never good at swimming. It was very risky. I was so scared. It is not easy being in the sea where you can’t hold anything. Anything can happen there. Only God can save you.”
If a migrant leaves Sicily’s Umberto I holding centre in Siracusa before his or her asylum hearing, the application is annulled.
Sono, from Senegal, said: “I am here but I have cried. If I think about it I want to cry because I have no money. Not even these clothes are mine. I was a man, in the name of
