Llegan a un centro de acogida de Tetuán los primeros menores sacados de Ceuta
The procedure organised for the return of the minors present in Ceuta began on Friday in the Santa Amelia Sports Centre of the Autonomous City, where 234 children had been housed after their illegal entry into Spain, and the first children have already arrived at a reception centre in Tetuan, specifically at the Martil Social Assistance Centre, a Moroccan town located 30 kilometres south of Castillejos, in the region of Tangiers-Tetuan.
According to the EFE news agency, 15 minors were the first to take part in the return operation following the pact reached between Spain and Morocco. Sources consulted indicated that the operation is being carried out in compliance with the guarantees for the protection of children's rights. Meanwhile, it is estimated that there are approximately 800 minors present in Ceuta.
The Martil Social Assistance Centre has been operating since 2019 thanks to the Moroccan State operation called the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), with a view to sheltering vulnerable or homeless people and helping them with their social and economic integration. Its facilities have the capacity to house 70 people and, for the moment, according to various reports, there are already 15 minors occupying places in the centre. The next returns will be carried out in groups, day by day, "as the individual files are processed", but no details have been given as to how and when these files will be completed, as reported by the newspaper El País.
According to documents revealed by Cadena Ser and El País itself, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior maintains that the Kingdom of Morocco is committed to looking after the interests of the minors, and explains that the children will be taken in at the aforementioned centre for minors in Martil, near Tetuan. The Ministry of the Interior guarantees that Morocco will protect the rights of the minors until they are reunited with their parents as soon as possible and, in the event that this scenario is not possible, it will be L'Entraide Nationale (belonging to the Moroccan Ministry of Family, Solidarity, Equality and Social Development) who will take care of them.
In this way, the Spanish-Moroccan agreement to carry out the return of people who entered illegally through the Ceuta border on 17 and 18 May in the midst of the diplomatic crisis between Spain and Morocco has been reached, which was heightened by the entry of Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, into Spanish territory to be hospitalised due to serious respiratory problems. This was criticised by the Alaouite kingdom, which denounced the lack of information and cooperation on the part of a country considered an ally such as Spain. The former Spanish Foreign Minister, Arancha González Laya, argued humanitarian reasons for accepting Ghali, but these explanations did not satisfy Morocco. After the Polisario leader's presence in Spanish territory became known, the situation became very tense and other worrying episodes occurred, such as the illegal entry of more than 10,000 people into Ceuta and Spain's exclusion from Operation Crossing the Strait, which facilitates the return of Moroccans to their country during the summer season.
Now, Spain's new foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, has managed to get Rabat to accept the collective return of the minors who entered Ceuta. Thus, following the agreement reached, the Ministry of the Interior began the return operation in groups of 15, except in the case of those considered "vulnerable".
Precisely, Albares replaced González Laya to improve relations with Morocco after the diplomatic confrontation generated as a result of Ghali's presence in Spain. The former Spanish ambassador to Paris had already declared on his debut at the head of the Ministry that his intention was to strengthen ties with the North African country, which is a neighbouring, friendly and allied nation.
On the instructions of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a communication addressed to the Government Delegation in Ceuta and the Autonomous City on the 10th of last month requested "the return of the minors to the Kingdom of Morocco". The letter indicated that Morocco "undertakes to look after the interests of the minors" that they plan to transfer to the Martín Centre in Tetuán, as indicated by Cadena Ser and the newspaper El País. In a letter sent by the Secretary of State for Security, it was stated: "We request that the provisions of article 5 of the 2007 Agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and Morocco on cooperation in the field of illegal emigration of unaccompanied minors, their protection and their concerted return be implemented".
The truth is that since the arrival of José Manuel Albares at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the confrontation with Morocco has been notably reduced. The Moroccan authorities even recently invited the representative of the Spanish Embassy in Rabat to a guided tour of the headquarters of its anti-terrorist service, which was attended by diplomatic representatives from several countries, as El Español newspaper recalled.
After learning of the operation to return minors, the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, headed by Ione Belarra, a Podemos MP (a party that forms part of the coalition government with President Pedro Sánchez's PSOE), has regretted that it has not received any response despite having spent months making itself available to the Ministry of the Interior to work on a protocol for family reunification for minors who migrate alone in compliance with international and national requirements.
In this regard, he stressed that any family reunification process must have a protocol that includes individualised interviews, as well as detailed knowledge of the procedure by the Public Prosecutor's Office.
There are organisations that have opposed these group returns, such as various NGOs and the Ombudsman, as they believe that Spanish law is not being complied with. Save the Children has stated that any collective repatriation of children or adolescents is illegal, recalling that the regrouping of Moroccan minors must guarantee their protection and be individual and voluntary. The organisation stressed that in order for the return to be considered as the solution that best guarantees the rights of the child, it must be carried out after a thorough and individual analysis of each case. It also pointed out that it is essential that their return does not pose a risk to their physical or moral integrity and that individualised monitoring and a guarantee of reintegration can be guaranteed to ensure that all their rights are fulfilled, as the media outlet La Razón pointed out.
It should be recalled that the return of unaccompanied foreign minors is included in a bilateral agreement with Morocco, but since its last revision in 2012, it had not been activated.
For his part, the Secretary of State for Agenda 2030, Enrique Santiago, one of the positions elected by Podemos in the Spanish government, has also criticised the return of minors who entered Ceuta, as implemented by the Ministry of the Interior.
In a message on social networks, Santiago stated that it was "a return of foreign children without family protection, carried out without the intervention of the Public Prosecutor's Office, against the criteria of the Ombudsman and without the existence of a return protocol". For all these reasons, the Secretary of State of the Spanish Government considers that the return of the minors from Ceuta "at least lacks legal security and very probably ignores 'the best interests of the minor'".
In spite of everything, it seems that relations between Spain and Morocco continue to improve in part after the last diplomatic crisis, thanks to Moroccan predisposition and the stance of the new Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares. Meanwhile, the judicial question of Brahim Ghali's entry and exit in Spain continues to be resolved, and officials from the previous Foreign Ministry team are being investigated to find out whether the Polisario Front leader was allegedly not subjected to any controls, a benefit that he was not entitled to. On the other hand, one of the two lawsuits filed against Brahim Ghali for alleged crimes of torture and genocide, presented by the Sahrawi Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ASADEDH) and the Sahrawi activist Fadel Breica, is still pending decision in the National Court, after one of them was already shelved.