From the Washington Post:

A foreign mafia has come to Italy and further polarized the migration debate

By Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli, June 25

In a country that has fought for decades to weaken its homegrown mafia, a foreign crime group is gathering strength.

The group’s members are Nigerian. They hold territory from the north in Turin to the south in Palermo. They smuggle drugs and traffic women, deploying them as prostitutes on Italy’s streets. They find new members among the caste of wayward migrants, illicitly recruiting at Italian government-run asylum centers.

Investigators and justice officials say the Nigerian mafia, as it’s called here, has capitalized on half a decade of historic migration — a scenario merging crime and migrants in a manner that nationalist politicians in Europe and beyond have long warned about.

As Italy’s politics swing to the right, the country is contending not only with a foreign mafia but also with a divisive question: Are long-held migration fears coming to fruition? …

For the far right’s opponents, the Nigerian mafia has proved to be a trickier case — a problem that is politically risky to play down but that they say is being exploited as a cudgel against all migrants. They note that the Nigerian mafia primarily occupies immigrant neighborhoods, preying on those residents in a way that may feel familiar to Italians who have lived under the mob.

In a speech in April, Pope Francis — whose migration advocacy runs counter to the Italian government’s stance — made the case that delinquents can be found anywhere and that the mafia is “ours — made in Italy.”

“It was not Nigerians who invented the mafia,” he said.