Spain to send troops to Ceuta to bolster border security
Spain's government has announced it will deploy military personnel to its North African enclave Ceuta to assist border guards amid a surge of illegal crossing attempts from Morocco. Hundreds of migrants are trying to reach Spain by swimming around breakwaters or scaling the border fence, with nine reported dead.
Officials in the Spanish territory of Ceuta on the northwestern tip of Africa have asked the government in Madrid to declare a national emergency and send the army to help secure its border with Morocco. The call came as video footage showed crowds of people trying to walk around the breakwaters separating Moroccan and Spanish territory or scale the border fence.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pledged an "immediate response." Spain's Interior Ministry said later that the armed forces would send personnel to Ceuta to support the Guardia Civil. "The Armed Forces will reinforce the Guardia Civil in the exercise of its powers and any others that may be necessary to maintain civil security in the city of Ceuta," the ministry said.
The Guardia Civil reported that crowds broke through fences after overwhelming police at the city's breakwater. Video footage showed hundreds swimming from the Moroccan side using inflatable inner tubes and other flotation aids. "The situation is absolute chaos," Rachid Sbihi, head of the association representing Spain's Guardia Civil in Ceuta, told the Associated Press. "It's not possible to give precise numbers but there are thousands of migrants crossing," he said, adding that the border had "totally collapsed." The AFP news agency cited a spokesperson for the Spanish government's delegation in Ceuta as saying that nine people had died amid the offshore rush.
Juan Jesus Vivas, head of the Ceuta regional government, called for an emergency declaration on grounds of national security, asking for more police and army deployment. He wrote that the small city was facing "a humanitarian and social emergency" of national proportions. "We cannot face this pressure alone — pressure that has resulted in the arrival of between 1,500 and 2,000 people in just 10 days, equivalent to 2% of our population," he stated. The territory has around 85,000 inhabitants.
Sanchez said he was mobilizing all necessary resources and cooperating with Moroccan authorities. The Interior Ministry said Morocco was "closely cooperating" and its police were stopping "numerous people" trying to cross. Both countries agreed to work together to return all people who entered Ceuta illegally. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska plans to visit Ceuta on Friday.
The scenes are reminiscent of May 2021 when over 8,000 people entered the territory in two days. In early July, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that migrants arriving by sea cannot be immediately pushed back. Additionally, the Spanish government offered amnesty and residency permits to migrants who can prove they were already in the country, but that does not apply to current arrivals.
