The Eritreans, including a baby whose mother died on her journey to Egypt, were snared in a growing Egyptian crackdown on African migrants that has seen up to 1,000 Eritrean asylum seekers deported since June 11 despite UN objections.
The unlucky newcomers had been hiding in Egypt for up to a month before they were finally caught this week, security sources said. They join hundreds more of their countrymen thought to be detained across Egypt. Egypt for years tolerated tens of thousands of African migrants who sought work or refuge on its territory. But the detentions and then abrupt deportations this month could mark a shift in Cairo's longstanding open-door policy toward refugees.
"It's a worrying pattern," Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch said of the recent deportations, the largest from Egypt of probable refugees in decades.
Egypt's attitude toward the migrants soured in recent months after it came under pressure to staunch a rising flow of Africans over its sensitive Sinai border into Israel. Police have also shot dead 14 African migrants at the border this year.
Hundreds more Eritreans detained in Egypt remain at risk of deportation and could face torture at home, says Amnesty International, which labelled the returns as "flights to death".
"There is a huge fear that Egypt will continue rolling back on its refugee obligations ... It's a really unfortunate trend," an Amnesty spokeswoman said.
NEW KIND OF MIGRATION
Activists say Egypt appears to be reacting to a new pattern of migration in which African migrants arriving either by boat from the Red Sea or by land from Sudan seek to use Egypt as a launch pad to sneak over the desert border into Israel.
Previous waves of migrants would simply stay in Egypt, living for years off its large informal economy. But the new migrants often bypass all border controls - anathema to security-conscious Egypt - and head straight for Sinai.
