About 25, 000 Tunisians arrived in Malta and the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa during the spring.
The islanders' fear, said their mayor, Bernardino De Rubeis, is that Lampedusa could become a Mediterranean Alcatraz.
The summer months usually bring boatloads of African migrants to Lampedusa, a rocky outcrop between Sicily and Tunisia.
Previously migrants had been transferred from Lampedusa to Sicily, where those not given refugee status eventually received an essentially meaningless expulsion order.
Today, a ship is always waiting off the shores of Lampedusa, ready to move the immigrants when their numbers get too high.
In so far as it reflects a tough stance on immigration, the crisis on Lampedusa is unlikely to erode support for the government.
Lampedusa, the closest Italian island to Africa, has become a destination for tens of thousands of refugees seeking to enter European Union countries.
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Now Mr Maroni has decreed that the migrants should be held at a new identification and expulsion centre on Lampedusa itself until they are repatriated.
This is what they've wanted, the Italian island of Lampedusa.
They later told rescuers that 29 others had set off with them on the 300km (185 mile) journey from al-Zuwara on the Libyan coast to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
As a result, only 9 of the 72 migrants who boarded the boat in Tripoli -- supposedly headed for the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa -- survived the 15-day voyage at sea.
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Plenty of space for the people smugglers to bring the migrants down here by cover of night, launch them off in those small wooden boats and head them towards the Italian island of Lampedusa, or sometimes to Malta.
Along with a string of promises to buy a house in Lampedusa, build a golf course and plant trees (he has not yet done any of these), he did promise to send large ships to remove migrants to the mainland.
Italian Coast Guard 7th Naval Squadron, Lampedusa, Sicily, nominated by Italy for working day and night, seven days a week, to save the lives of thousands of people from boats and rafts adrift or sinking in the waters surrounding the island of Lampedusa.
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