The central government is finding it extremely difficult to resume normally the expulsion flights for migrants in an irregular situation that were suspended during the pandemic for health reasons. Since 2020, Spain has only managed to charter ten flights with 123 people heading to their countries of origin. Last year, when all records were broken with 56,852 irregular entries – due to the migration crisis in the Canary Islands – the Government organized four flights with a total of 59 deported migrants. Furthermore, for the first time in the last four years, Algeria – which had been cooperating in maritime returns – did not accept any expulsion operations by boat in 2023. The Ministry of the Interior takes solace in the fact that the rest of the European Union countries with which it shares its immigration policy also find it “almost impossible to organize these flights.”
Interior works with Foreign Affairs and they are convinced that expulsion flights are an effective formula to deter irregular immigration. In fact, in the last trips that Ministers Fernando Grande-Marlaska and José Manuel Albares have made to countries of origin and transit along the migratory routes – such as Senegal, Mauritania or Morocco – the issue of deportations has always been on the table. meeting with his counterparts, as confirmed by ministerial sources. The problem is that the expulsions of migrants do not depend only on the will of Spain, but – to a large extent – ??on the compliance of the receiving country. And this is where they hit a wall that is difficult to overcome.
The Government managed to charter a flight to Dakar last autumn, after both ministers met with Senegalese leaders. Almost 40,000 immigrants arrived in the Canary Islands alone in 2023, most of them aboard Senegalese canoes. Those deported, according to police sources, were not recently arrived immigrants, but rather those awaiting expulsion. However, neither the Interior nor the Exterior have managed to achieve the commitment to maintain the regularity of these flights, due to the popular rejection it generates in the countries of origin.
According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to which the same sources refer, remittances – the money that emigrants send to their families – account for between 5% and 10% of GDP in some African countries. “Accepting the expulsions means confirming that you are collaborating so that your nationals who support their families from abroad stop doing so. That is very complicated to justify,” defend government sources.
This explains, in part, the opacity with which the Interior manages this issue; The ministry headed by Marlaska refuses to give details of the flights with expelled immigrants. A parliamentary response to EH Bildu deputy Jon Iñarritu, to which La Vanguardia has had access, reveals that neither in 2020 nor in 2021 did the Government manage to carry out flights of this type. However, in those two years repatriations were carried out by boat to Algeria: 44 with a total of 764 Algerians, of which ten were women.
In 2022, when flights were recovered, six were chartered with 64 migrants on board. From Almería, that same year, 13 ships left for the Algerian coast with 198 repatriates, all men. However, last year the flights decreased to four, with 59 people expelled. And no maritime operations. Figures that, as senior government officials acknowledge privately, are “far from what is desired.”
This lack of open avenues to proceed with returns causes a huge bottleneck between expulsion orders and their execution. According to the Immigration Law, being in an irregular situation in Spain is a serious infraction, which can be accompanied by expulsion from the country. But this, as police sources acknowledge, is neither an easy nor quick procedure, since the migrant has the possibility of presenting a series of allegations through litigation that can greatly delay the process.
The expulsion can only be agreed, according to the doctrine of the Supreme Court, if aggravating circumstances arise such as lacking papers, having a criminal record or not having family or domicile in Spain. If there is finally a green light for expulsion, it is in the next step where it collapses: the orders can barely be executed because the countries refuse to recognize the citizens as theirs.
The Government defends that Spain is one of the countries with the best return rates. However, it is impossible to compare these data because there is no community transparency. In the same response to the EH Bildu parliamentarian, Moncloa states that last year 28 joint international flights were carried out financed by the Frontex Agency – which has no negotiating capacity – with 689 people expelled. They left from Madrid and the destination was “different countries.” In 2022, the number of these international flights was 20 with 348 people on board also with multiple destinations. However, it is not clear how many migrants Spain managed to repatriate.
These data show the enormous difficulties that countries encounter in carrying out expulsions. This is why at the beginning of the year, when the controversy broke out over the transfer of powers in matters of migration to Catalonia – achieved by Junts –, from the Interior they were astonished when the independence party said it wanted to manage the expulsions. “They think this is buying a plane ticket and taking the migrant back,” they joked. Given the complexity of the matter, it was Pedro Sánchez who settled the controversy: “Expelling migrants is the responsibility of the central administration.”
