Many humanitarian workers actually call it the ‘so-called Libyan Coast Guard.’ Now, the Libyan Coast Guard’s primary function is to patrol the waters of the Mediterranean and detain refugees. In 2018, the Italian government worked with the European Union to help the Coast Guard gain approval from the United Nations to operate one hundred miles off the coast of Libya, which meant that the Coast Guard could operate in international waters that reached over halfway to Italy. Thousands upon thousands of dollars were shelled out to give the Coast Guard resources and training. In fact, the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, played a most pivotal role in aiding the Coast Guard and capturing migrants. Ian Urbina said that Frontex essentially operated as the ‘Air Force’ in the Libyan migration operation: “So, the air force is called Frontex, and Frontex is the EU border agency. And Frontex puts planes and drones over the Mediterranean with the sole purpose of spotting and looking for migrant rafts that are trying to reach Europe, and they report that intelligence ultimately to the Libyans.” Frontex essentially gives aerial surveillance footage of migrants in the sea to the Coast Guard so the Coast Guard can detain those migrants and then shove them into abusive detention centers and for-profit prisons. Interestingly enough, Frontex has tried to deny its collaboration with the Libyan Coast Guard, insisting that its sole goal is to save the lives of migrants. This, of course, is quite a hypocritical goal when Frontex is actively involved in aiding a group that detains migrants in inhumane conditions. 55
The evidence of Frontex’s collaboration with the Coast Guard tells a story that contradicts the goal it claims to work towards. For instance, a nonprofit journalism organization called Lighthouse Reports produced clear documentation of 20 instances wherein Frontex was close to migrant boats that were captured by the Coast Guard. Furthermore, a European transparency group that goes by the name FragDenStaat released documents that prove that Frontex sends the exact locations of migrants' rafts directly to the Coast Guard. The European Union is also directly tied to the prisons operating in Libya itself, where many migrants are held in hazardous conditions that threaten their health and safety. The European Union provides the funds that the prison system runs on, and many migrants are raped, tortured, unlawfully imprisoned, and killed in that system. The funds can be traced: the 2021 New Yorker article previously mentioned was the result of an 11-month investigation that unveiled purchasing documents, open-records requests, and tracking data. With mounting evidence, it can be confidently stated that the European Union helps identify migrant rafts and boats in the Mediterranean Sea, gives intelligence to the Libyan Coast Guard (which thereby enables the Coast Guard to detain and imprison the migrants), and funds the inhumane prisons that the migrants are then sent to.
