The Diplomat
The National Police, early yesterday afternoon, activated an operation to repatriate the nearly 800 unaccompanied Moroccan minors who have been in Ceuta since mid-May, a measure that has provoked reticence in the Ministry of Social Rights.
The operation, as police sources explained to Europa Press, began with the transfer, in groups of 15, of the 234 adolescents sheltered in the Santa Amelia sports centre.
The operation, which will not include minors considered “vulnerable”, comes after the Government delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, announced last Monday that “within days” relations between Spain and Morocco would once again be “very good” following the change in the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The repatriation is interpreted in diplomatic circles as a gesture by Morocco to facilitate the re-establishment of normal relations with Spain, after the crisis provoked by the reception in a Spanish hospital of the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali.
The Ministry of Social Rights, headed by Podemos leader Ione Belarra, warned, after learning of the measure adopted by the Department of the Interior, that “any process of family reunification must have a protocol that includes individualised interviews with the migrant children”, as well as “detailed knowledge of the procedure by the public prosecutor’s office”.
Social Rights assured that it has been “months” putting itself “at the disposal” of the Ministry headed by Fernando Grande-Marlaska to “work on a protocol for family reunification of children who migrate alone” that “complies with national and international regulations”, without having received “any response” from the Interior.
According to the newspaper ABC, the Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and the Ceuta Prosecutor’s Office have decided to open an investigation to find out the conditions under which the repatriation to Morocco is taking place.
Several non-governmental organisations, such as the Spanish Network for Immigration and Refugee Aid, Caminando Fronteras and the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), expressed their opposition to the measure on the grounds that it violates children’s rights.
For his part, the director general of Save the Children, Andrés Conde, had warned that the repatriation of these minors would only be viable “in specific cases”. “As a universal solution, it would be illegal from the point of view of the regulations applied by the Spanish government and we would also be failing in our moral duty: it is simply impossible,” he said.
