Brussels Says All Migrants Still Illegally in Ceuta Must Be Returned to Morocco, Minors Included

The European Commission said on Aug. 18 that it expects all migrants still living illegally in Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta to be returned to Morocco, and that European Union law allows unaccompanied minors to be sent back as well.

“The priority is now for the Spanish and for the Moroccan authorities to maintain control of the situation and to ensure the swift return of all those who illegally remain in Ceuta,” Markus Lammert, the Commission’s home affairs spokesman, told reporters in Brussels.

Asked whether “all” also covered children who crossed without their families, Lammert said the matter was governed by EU legislation. He cited the return directive and the EU return regulation that will replace it, saying both provide for the removal of people staying illegally, “including unaccompanied minors.”

“We continue to stress that the expectation is that all those who remain in Ceuta illegally will be returned,” he said.

Thousands Still in the City

Lammert said the Commission does not compile its own count of migrants and relies on figures supplied by central and local authorities.

Several thousand people are still in Ceuta illegally, he said, among them a significant number of unaccompanied minors, though the exact figure is unclear.

The Spanish Interior Ministry said the National Police had located and registered 2,168 minors between July 30 and the morning of Aug. 18, a total it described as close to final. All have been placed under the guardianship of the autonomous city.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska put the number of migrants still in the city at about 5,000 on Aug. 13, well below the roughly 10,000 estimated by the Ceuta government.

He said that no one who entered irregularly would be allowed to remain, travel to the mainland, or obtain papers.

The Legal Obstacle

EU law does provide for the return of unaccompanied minors, but not summarily.

The return directive requires a member state to satisfy itself, before removal, that the child will be handed to a family member, a guardian, or adequate reception facilities in the country of return.

Spanish courts have already ruled on a nearly identical case. The Supreme Court confirmed that the August 2021 repatriation of Moroccan children from Ceuta was unlawful because the administration disregarded the individual procedure set out in Spain’s immigration law, which requires a case file, a report on the child’s family circumstances, a hearing for the child, and the involvement of the public prosecutor.

Migrant organizations objected to Lammert’s remark within hours.

Mauricio Valiente, director general of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid, called them a regrettable error that should be corrected.

Paula Barrachina Esteban, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said every case requires an individual assessment and that return cannot be presumed to be the right outcome for a given child.

Political shift

Morocco has said it is prepared to take back its unaccompanied nationals.

Moroccan state media reported that the king had issued instructions to work toward their return, and that the delay stemmed from Spanish administrative procedures rather than Moroccan reluctance.

Lammert said the Commission had taken note of Morocco’s stated willingness to take back its nationals, and of statements by the Spanish interior and foreign ministers on the status of those still in Ceuta. “It’s important that no one who is staying illegally in Ceuta will be transferred to Mainland Spain,” he said.

Randy Yaloz, a French-American lawyer and president of Republicans Overseas France, told The Epoch Times that the shift in tone in Brussels owes much to the images from Ceuta circulating on social media, which he said were “so damning that the European Commission did not want to be seen condoning what they showed.”

“One can reasonably assume that, had the same crisis erupted in the era of open-border policies under Biden, when social media carried less weight, the story would not have had the same impact and the European Commission would have insisted on migrants’ rights under EU law, as it traditionally has, rather than on their return,“ he said.

“Whether in the U.S. with CNN and Reuters, or in France, with France info and AFP, these outlets all spread the ridiculous claim that ‘1,500 migrants’ had crossed the border, even as everyone was clearly seeing on the footage circulating online that numbers were far higher than that. The gap between the narrative presented by the mainstream media and the Spanish government and what people were seeing on social media was so stark that the scale of the situation ultimately became impossible to downplay,” Yaloz said, adding, “We are truly living through a historic moment.”