In a decision issued on Thursday, a Spanish court confirmed that the return to their country of Moroccan minors who arrived in the spring of 2021 in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta was illegal. During this migratory episode, which had seen the arrival of 2,000 people, the rights of these young people had been violated.
The return to their country of Moroccan minors who arrived in the spring of 2021 in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta was indeed illegal. This was confirmed on Thursday, June 30, by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, Spain. The Court, seized in the second instance, dismissed the authorities, judging that “the administration, by refraining from applying the minimum guarantees of compulsory procedure, had given rise to an objective situation of proven risk for the physical integrity or morality of unaccompanied foreign minors”.
“The sudden, massive and illegal nature of the entry into Ceuta last spring of thousands of Moroccan citizens in no way authorized Spain to evade the law”, concludes the judgment.
Clearly, the rights of these minors had been flouted during this migratory episode.
Dismissals that do not comply with the law
These young people had entered the small autonomous territory of Ceuta on May 17 and 18, 2021, among some 10,000 migrants who had taken advantage of the lax attitude of the Moroccan security forces to cross the border. Most of the refugees were sent back to Morocco within days, but Ceuta was still home to nearly 820 underage migrants two months later.
The Spanish government of socialist Pedro Sánchez then undertook to send them back to Morocco in groups of 15, triggering the controversy. Complaints were immediately filed by several NGOs demanding that the evictions be stopped.
Unaccompanied minors were, in fact, brought back to Morocco without having had access to a lawyer and without being able to be heard. Returns to the country of origin must however be “accompanied by a series of guarantees” to comply with the law, said Patricia Fernández Vicens, lawyer for one of the NGOs.
A Ceuta court ruled in favor of these NGOs in August 2021 and suspended the repatriation of a group of minors.
The authorities, both the municipality and the government delegation (prefecture) in Ceuta, had appealed. The decision can still be appealed against.
Ceuta, one of the only free routes for migrants
Ceuta is, with the neighboring city of Melilla, one of the two Spanish enclaves located on the northern coast of Morocco, the only land borders of the EU on the African continent.
These enclaves constitute one of the only free routes for migrants wishing to reach Europe, the highly perilous crossing of the fences not depending on smugglers, unlike journeys across the Mediterranean.
On June 24, 23 African migrants died in an attempt by around 2,000 people to force their way into Melilla. These people died “in jostling and falling from the iron fence”, local Moroccan authorities said. The migrants were also the target of relentless law enforcement that day, as revealed by amateur images showing bodies lying on the ground and police beating batons.
