Until January 31, according to data provided by the Ministry of the Interior, no immigrants had entered Ceuta irregularly—by sea. In all of 2023, 67 people did so. However, since last Thursday there has been an “intensification”, as reported by the government of the autonomous city, with the entry of up to 135 immigrants: 57 of them minors.
Faced with this surge in immigrants, who have defied the latest storm that has hit the area, Morocco has ordered its navy to reinforce surveillance in the maritime environment of the border to prevent departures from the coasts to Spain. According to EFE, a Moroccan patrol boat has been permanently assigned to the northern border breakwater of Benzú. Control has also been intensified on the Tarajal border.
These two border points were protagonists in May 2021, when more than 10,000 migrants swam across them due to the inaction of the Moroccan gendarmes. At that time, relations between Spain and Morocco were going through one of their worst moments after the Government welcomed the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Gali, in a hospital in Logroño “for humanitarian reasons.”
The president of Ceuta, Juan Jesús Vivas, sent a letter this Tuesday to Pedro Sánchez to request an urgent meeting to address the migratory pressure that the autonomous city is facing. Especially, with the issue of unaccompanied foreign minors. Vivas denounces that Ceuta’s reception capacity “is overwhelmed”, which is why he demands a “decisive and energetic” State strategy. The Ceuta government assures that the situation is “very worrying” and that it is “necessary” for the State to “use all the means at its disposal” in this matter.
This urgency is the same as that denounced by the Government of the Canary Islands, which currently has some 5,500 unaccompanied migrant children and young people under its guardianship. According to UNICEF, fundamental children’s rights may be being violated in the archipelago due to the collapse that is occurring. The communities committed to hosting a quota of these minors, but more than half of the regions have not yet completed the 2022 commitment.
Police sources believe that this rebound in Ceuta is temporary: they consider the reinforcement that the Moroccan navy will carry out will serve to deter young people who, mistakenly, are thinking that bad weather favors their attempts to swim to Spain.
The same sources also explain that these days, in which wind gusts have reached more than 100 kilometers per hour, the alarms go off much more frequently due to the impact of the wind on the sensors. This causes border control to confuse entry attempts with false alarms, creating confusion that could have been taken advantage of by young people who have jumped into the sea in recent days.
