MADRID (AP) — Around 3,000 Moroccans swam or took inflatable boats to Ceuta on Monday, about a third of them minors, Spanish authorities said, marking the highest single-day migrant arrival to the Spanish exclave in North Africa.
Health officials said a young man drowned while trying to cross the river and several people, including a young child, had to be rescued for hypothermia.
The influx comes as Spain’s relations with Morocco, Spain’s southern partner and a key ally in curbing migrant flows, have deteriorated over Madrid’s decision to allow hospital treatment for the leader of a militant group fighting for independence from Morocco.
Ceuta and nearby Melilla are seen as stepping stones to Europe for African migrants, and every year hundreds of migrants risk injury or death by jumping fences, hiding in cars or swimming around a seawall that stretches several metres into the Mediterranean Sea.
But 3,000 people crossing the border in just one day put a strain on police and emergency services in the city of 84,000. The figure is almost three times the total number of people who have arrived in the two Spanish territories so far this year, and more than the 2,228 who arrived by both land and sea in 2020.
Footage published by local newspaper El Faro de Ceuta showed people climbing up the rock face of a breakwater and running along Tarajal beach on the southeastern edge of the city.
Other videos reviewed by The Associated Press showed long lines of young people standing outside the gates of a warehouse run by the local Red Cross, waiting to be registered by members of Spanish security forces.
The Spanish Interior Ministry said in a statement late Monday that it was sending 200 more law enforcement officers, including riot police and border guards, to Ceuta to speed up the return of arrivals. Spain does not offer asylum to Moroccans. The country only allows unaccompanied migrant children to stay in the country legally under government supervision.
The influx of Moroccans came at the end of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, when many Europeans return home after visiting relatives in the North African country, and was also added to by Madrid’s decision to host Brahim Ghali, leader of Rabat’s contested Polisario Front claim to Western Sahara, who is recovering from COVID-19 in a hospital in northern Spain.
The Spanish government, which allowed Mr. Galli to enter the country under a false name, justified its decision to grant him protection on humanitarian grounds.
The Moroccan foreign ministry said last month that Madrid’s move was “contrary to the spirit of partnership and good neighbourliness”. It also said in May that Spain’s move would have “consequences”.
Mohamed Ben Aissa, head of the Northern Observatory for Human Rights, a nonprofit that helps migrants in northern Morocco, said the influx was the result of a combination of seasonal attempts to migrate to Europe, the arrival of better weather and recent tensions between Rabat and Madrid.
“According to the information we have, Moroccan authorities have relaxed the usually heavy militarization of the coast following the Moroccan foreign ministry’s statement about Spain’s reception of Brahim Ghali,” Ben Aissa told The Associated Press.
“The area is closely monitored by security forces and any attempts to scale the fence or swim there are usually thwarted,” he added.
Spain has strong but complicated diplomatic relations with its southern neighbor, Morocco, and the two countries frequently cite decades of cooperation to manage migration flows, including regular payments from Spain and the European Union to Morocco and training for Moroccan police and army, as a blueprint for EU migration policy in the central and eastern Mediterranean.
Cooperation with Moroccan intelligence services in the fight against extremism is also important for Europe.
When asked by reporters whether the Rabat government was deliberately relaxing migrant exit controls, the Spanish foreign minister simply said he had no information.
“We are not aware of it,” Minister Arancha González Laya said before concluding a brief media statement, after which the ministry declined to provide further details.
In a statement, the interior minister said Spain had “worked tirelessly on a migration policy that concerns the whole European Union and Morocco, the country of origin of the people who arrived by swimming today.”
A spokesman for the Spanish government mission in Ceuta said the crossing began at 2 a.m. in Ceuta’s border area called Benzou, and dozens of people continued on to the eastern coast near Tarajal.
The spokesman, who was not allowed to be named in media reports, said the crossing from the nearby Moroccan town of Fnideq had not stopped even as daylight arrived, with entire families with children swimming or riding in rubber dinghies.
A 10-metre (32-foot) high double fence surrounds Ceuta’s southwestern border with Morocco, while the rest of the tiny territory faces the Strait of Gibraltar and the European mainland across the water.
Morocco has imposed a total land travel ban to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and several border gates have been closed for more than a year, leaving many locals who depend on jobs in Ceuta and Melilla or on cross-border trade without a job.
More than 100 Moroccan youths also swam into Spanish territory at the end of April, but most were returned to their home countries within 48 hours of being confirmed as adults, authorities said.
___
Associated Press writer Mosaab Elshamy contributed to this report from Rabat, Morocco.
___
Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
