Forced and deceived returns from Ceuta to Morocco: testimonies from immigrants confirm that the Government protects returns without guarantees

The boy, 19 years old, should have appeared in the pages of this newspaper with his name and surname and showing his face. We interviewed and photographed him a few days ago on El Trampolín beach. There he had settled in an igloo-shaped tent about halfway through the shanty settlement, which then occupied more than a kilometer in length. He caught our attention because of the peculiarity of the profession he dedicated himself to and the relevance he had acquired in Morocco performing it. "There I have no more opportunities to grow," he explained why he had decided to swim to Ceuta on July 28, two days before the mass entry.

If we now hide his identity - we will call him Omar - and his story it is because he is one of those evicted last weekend from El Trampolín and is back in Morocco. He is on the list of the 1,823 immigrants who, according to Minister Ángel Víctor Torres, decided to return voluntarily throughout Sunday and last Monday after the dismantling of the camp.

Omar, however, denies that returning to Morocco was his own decision. Thus, this Thursday, October 8, four days after the eviction, he contacted this newspaper asking for help. «They returned me to Morocco. I came back on Sunday. I was looking for your number so I could contact you. (...) Is there any chance I can come back? I beg you. Help me please. I will never forget this favor you did for me. “I will be grateful to you all my life,” he pleaded.

"On Sunday morning soldiers and security agents [police] came and surrounded us," he responded in Dariya - the variety of Arabic used in Morocco - when we asked him for more details of what happened. «They told us that they were going to take our fingerprints and then they would take us to the camps, but before that they put us on buses and took us directly to the border. Later they told us that Morocco had reached an agreement with Spain to return all the migrants. And so the dream ended..."

-Exactly who told you that an agreement had been reached with Morocco?

-It was the Spanish agents themselves who told us that they had reached an agreement with Morocco to return us.

According to Omar's testimony, therefore, they were evicted from El Trampolín and put on the buses that were supposed to take them to the CATE - Temporary Reception Center for Foreigners. There, according to the procedure established by legislation, they would be identified, their fingerprints would be taken and, assisted by a lawyer and a translator if necessary, they would state whether they wished to request asylum or not. Afterwards, they would be transferred to camps set up by the Government to house them until their files were resolved. The buses, however, Omar assures, did not go to CATE but directly to the border. On the other side, he says, the Moroccan army was waiting for them, who put them on other buses. "And they took us to cities far from where we live," he says. He, who is from Casablanca, ended up 440 kilometers away, in Tinghir. Last Friday afternoon he was 38 kilometers from Casablanca, about to reach his hometown.

This newspaper has collected the testimonies of two other Moroccan immigrants evicted last weekend from El Trampolín who also deny having gone voluntarily to Morocco and narrate similar events. "The police caught me and forcibly expelled me," says another 19-year-old young man. "The police take you and tell you: 'We are going to take you to the camp.' You get on with them and they take you directly to customs. They catch you, they open customs and they push you around as if you had no dignity, as if you were an animal or something. They push you and you leave. And that's it. The Moroccan army takes you, they seat you and a bus comes that takes you directly to a city far from yours," he says. Also originally from Casablanca, he ended up in Agadir, 855 kilometers from the border and 473 from his home.

In Kelaa des Sraghna - 623 kilometers south of the border - Ibrahim, 29, who is originally from Tangier, which is only 85 kilometers from Ceuta, ended up. This is how he tells how he left the Spanish autonomous city. «They woke us up in the morning [Sunday] and brought four translators. They told us not to be afraid, because they were going to take us to the camps. Then they brought buses and we got on them. They took us to customs and made us leave in groups of five. They were making us enter five by five into a place inside customs. There we found some people wearing green vests who were translating for us. They told us that the decision that had been made was that we were going to return to Morocco, as we were. Then they took us to Morocco, through customs. They searched us and took away the belongings we had with us. They carried out the necessary procedures and put us on a bus that took us to a city located in the southeast, called El Kelaa des Sraghna.

The same day that Omar contacted EL MUNDO asking for help, last Thursday, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, sole commander of the migration crisis, appeared before the media after a meeting of the Situation Committee in Ceuta. After updating the data on the massive entry - 11,026 had returned, 10,513 voluntarily, he said - a journalist asked him "about the accusations of some migrants who say that the information they were given by the Police in the El Trampolín eviction was not clear and that some went to Morocco, in quotes, being deceived."

Torres responded like this: «We are not deceiving anyone because what we are saying clearly is that the majority of the immigrants who passed on July 30 and 31 to Ceuta from Morocco are Moroccans and do not have the right to international protection. And when they are transferred, once they go on buses, there are only two options: if they get off the bus they go to the CATE and at the CATE it is explained to them that the file is going to be opened. What a large number do is return, because they do not want to have, as I say, that police record. Those who stay will continue with their files and they may last more or less weeks but they will end the same, they will be returned.

This newspaper already reported that on Sunday evening - the first day of the eviction - several lawyers from Ceuta were urgently mobilized at the request of the Police so that, on guard duty, they went to CATE to assist in the affiliation and triage process of 140 immigrants who were to arrive in three buses. The lawyers' confusion was enormous when they saw the empty buses arrive. All the immigrants who were supposed to arrive in them, they explained, had either escaped or had decided to voluntarily return to Morocco.

«On September 24 I said that before October 15 we planned that that beach could be evacuated. We have achieved that objective even before the time we had set,” Ángel Víctor Torres boasted after the eviction.