ORBETELLO, Italy — The girls , tanning their arms and tattooed ankles, looked up from their phones to sift through the caftans hanging from the Moroccan peddler’s cart. The fathers and sons kicking around orange balls paused to check out the sun hats that a Bangladeshi had balanced on his head. Mothers, fresh from cooling their legs in the sea, were implored by their children to consider the plastic sand buckets and inflatable flamingos that a Senegalese had spread at their feet.

For decades, migrant beach peddlers — disparagingly called vu cumprà or “wanna-buys”— have sidestepped cat-walking musclemen to march right into the familiar fabric of the Italian beach holiday. Heat waves and economic downturns made their jobs harder. Now, so do politics.

Exasperation in Italy over the migrant crisis prompted the rise of a hard-right, populist government, and the crackdown it imposed took many forms, from blocking aid ships carrying rescued asylum seekers to a much-lesser-known program called Operation Safe Beaches.

Introduced by the anti-migrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, the operation earmarked millions of euros for seaside communities to patrol the beaches for unlicensed peddlers, especially those trafficking in counterfeit goods.