Guinea-Bissau deports stranded illegal immigrants from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ghana

A group of 38 illegal immigrants captured in September in the Bissagos archipelago, off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, were on Wednesday deported to Guinea.

The 38 people made up of Guineans, Sierra Leoneans and Ghanaians were travelling in an illegal boat and got stranded on a sandbar in mid September.

“All administrative formalities were observed and a bus chartered by the IOM (International Organization for Migration) facilitated their transportion from Buruntuma,” the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Interior, Marcelino Cabral said.

“We first took them to Bubaque (main city of the archipelago) before transferring them to Bissau where the immigration and border service continued the identification work,” he added.

Migrants leaving West Africa often travel by the coast from land routes through Niger and Libya to cross to Europe across the Mediterranean.

The Bissagos archipelago, off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, consists of over 80 islands and only twenty are inhabited by a population of about 20,000 people.