Madrid now appears to have underestimated the number of would-be migrants remaining in Ceuta.
Posting earlier today on the situation in the Spanish city of Ceuta, I noted that, in an editorial published in the Financial Times on August 4, it was claimed that “none of the 72,000 [illegal migrants] have made it [to Spain]; all but 2,000 have returned to Morocco.”
Move along, nothing to see here. Ceuta was only overrun for a day. Just a couple of thousand left. All good.
However, I also noted reports, some from Ceuta, others from elsewhere in Spain, suggesting that the number of illegal migrants remaining in the city was higher than 2,000, perhaps somewhere between 8,000 and 11,000. I added that political bias may have pushed the estimates too high in the other direction, but even allowing for that, it appears that the FT rushed to judgment. It backed the line put about by Pedro Sánchez’s hard-left government, because that is what the paper’s editorialists wanted to believe.
There have been questions about the number of illegal migrants still remaining in Ceuta for a while. On August 3, I related how “reports that rather more of the migrants had remained in Ceuta than subsequent “mission accomplished” hosannas suggested were dismissed as disinformation/fake news and so on.” That was despite the fact that one of those making the claims was Ceuta’s mayor-president, Juan Jesús Vivas. According to Vivas, 3,000 to 5,000 of those who came into the city were still there. He said that the city’s two migrant reception centers — one for adults and another for minors — had “collapsed.” Admittedly, Vivas is a member of the center-right PP and opposed to Sánchez, but even so. . . .
And so, now this, via the Daily Telegraph:
Migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta will be rounded up and held in warehouses before their deportation to Morocco.
As many as 8,000 of the more than 70,000 illegal migrants who surged across the border last month remain in the territory.
Spain’s interior ministry told The Telegraph that a warehouse in Tarajal, yards from the Moroccan border, and another in the exclave would be used as temporary accommodation.
Officials hope that, except for 1,342 unaccompanied minors, who must be treated on a case-by-case basis, the others will be deported back to Morocco within 72 hours.
However, the Telegraph’s report also includes this detail:
There are legal questions about migrants who apply for international protection, whose applications must be examined under Spanish and European law and with the appropriate safeguards.
Hmmm.
When Sánchez’s government first announced the immigration amnesty (Spain’s seventh in 40 years) that was almost certainly a key underlying cause of the Ceuta crisis, Spaniards were told that about 500,000 would apply, a number that few believed. In the event almost 1.2 million applied, Not all those applications will be successful. It is currently thought that about a million will be. In due course, family members who satisfy the requirements of Spain’s family reunification rules will eventually be able to join them. There are some very high estimates of how many this might be. Some estimate it could be as many as three to four per applicant, others a much more conservative total of 600,000, but at this stage any numbers are little more than guesswork, and guesswork quite possibly colored by political bias.
In any event, the number of direct beneficiaries of the amnesty will substantially exceed the totals originally floated by the government and that’s without considering the effect of family reunification.
Madrid now appears to have underestimated the number of would-be migrants remaining in Ceuta. In fairness, conditions have been chaotic, but still. . . .