Ten Moroccans previously expelled for radicalization are detected in Ceuta after the massive border entry

The Police have detected ten Moroccans in Ceuta who had previously been expelled from Spain for Islamist radicalization. All of them, police sources tell EL MUNDO, were prohibited from entering national territory due to their close connection with jihadist radicalization processes. The men entered Spain at the end of July, when the massive entry into Ceuta took place. After identifying them, the Police proceeded to expel them from the country and return them to Morocco.

In parallel, the authorities maintain open surveillance of possible profiles linked to violent extremism, as pointed out by the same sources consulted. Spain has "specific" mechanisms to detect radicalization processes and prevent terrorist threats, and in recent years the National Police has carried out numerous operations against people linked to jihadist organizations or radicalization processes. The existence of these mechanisms is precisely what made it possible, in the ten cases detected in Ceuta, to know that the Moroccan immigrants had already been subject to previous actions and that they could not legally return to Spain. However, the agents highlight the difficulty in making identifications given the exorbitant number of immigrants who entered Spain by violating the border.

Currently, thousands of them continue in Ceuta, plunging the autonomous city into misgovernment that is difficult to address. The police response to identify and expel people who are prohibited from entering the country for committing crimes continues. In addition, officers maintain a railway line to ensure security and pursue any crime or threat on the city streets. In anti-terrorist matters, furthermore, precision is essential. As a whole, the National Police has had to simultaneously face very different tasks: caring for people in vulnerable situations, locating minors, guaranteeing citizen security, investigating crimes and verifying the identity and administrative situation of those who remain in Ceuta. The magnitude of the arrival turns each of these operations into an added challenge for the police forces.

The concern took on a special dimension when information systems warned that ten men had already been expelled from Spain precisely for reasons related to security. For this reason, one of the priorities of the police services during these weeks has been precisely to purify identities and cross-reference information. The National Police is the competent body in matters of documentation control and verification of border entry prohibitions, while the Civil Guard performs the functions of surveillance and control of the border perimeter. In cases in which an identity is obtained, consulting the databases allows us to determine if there are court orders, entry prohibitions, records or alerts that require immediate action. The enormous size of the entry at the end of July has multiplied the difficulty. Individual identification becomes much more complex when tens of thousands of people cross a border practically simultaneously, many of them without documentation or without their identity initially being able to be established with certainty. The subsequent work of the Security Forces consists precisely of reconstructing this information and determining the specific situation of each person.