(23 Mar 2021) While Rome is under lockdown a group of 29 migrants are being assisted by volunteers to board trains to reach other parts of Europe.
Early Sunday morning, migrants from Sudan and Eritrea make their way down the stairs towards the ticket counter at the Tiburtina train station.  
They are headed north, hoping to make it to the town of Ventimiglia on the border with France.
A few of them carry a plastic bag or a small knapsack, most of them have just the clothes on their backs, no food, no water, no money.  
Controls are tight at airports and train stations in most of Italy these days with police checking temperatures, travel documents and authorisations of passengers, but no one stops these men.  
A cultural mediator from an association called Baobab Experience dedicated to helping migrants in Italy, explains to them in Arabic the routine.  
He will help them get a ticket on the regional train as far as Florence - a cost of 20 euros ($24 US dollars) - whoever has 15 more euros can buy a ticket to Genova.  
Otherwise they can try to get by without a ticket.  
The journey will take all day but if they are lucky they will make it to Ventimiglia in the evening.
Whatever happens, they should not leave the train station in Florence, he explains, otherwise they will never be able to get back in, like Rome the city is under lockdown and people cannot travel between regions.
"We have at least every day from five to 20 migrants arriving asking for help to reach other countries, France, England, Germany, Holland, Belgium," explained Andrea Costa, a Baobab spokesman standing in the makeshift "camp" behind the station where migrants curl up in blankets on the sidewalk while they wait to head north.
Costa, and the cultural mediators who work with him, do their best to keep these migrants from getting swindled by smugglers who would try to make money off them in return a trip to the border.
Asharaf, a 30-year-old man from the Kordofan State in Sudan says he has been traveling for a year and getting on a train without a ticket to his final destination does not worry him.  
He spent a year in Libya trying to get to Europe and was pushed back three times when he tried to cross the Mediterranean.  
A slow train headed up the Italian peninsula does not compare to a packed dinghy at risk of sinking on the sea.  
Asharaf is headed to France where he has a brother.  
He could not stay in Sudan because there is war there, he explained.  
He came to Europe to live in peace.
On Monday, a press release from the Italian national police announced "Rail Safe Day" saying the police had checked over one hundred thousand passengers over the past week, arresting 14 and issuing over 300 fines.  
Most of the arrests were drug related – marijuana, cocaine, ketamines – a few pickpockets.  
"The authorities, maybe I can say are kind of happy that people from here go away," explained Andrea Costa from Baobab who has been helping migrants since 2015.  
Italy is under a strict lockdown with citizens blocked from moving between regions, but the migrants continue to arrive at the Tiburtina train station every day.  
The new arrivals join the dozens of migrants who squat behind the station sleeping in blankets on the ground as rats run freely back and forth.  
In the evening volunteers bring plastic bags with a meal.  
According to statistics gathered by the UN High Commission for Refugees, 5,034 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in the first two months of this year, that is up from 2,553 for the same period in 2020.  
They have been told never to take them off and risk attracting attention.  

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