Police evict the last large migrant settlement in Ceuta

The National Police were deployed early this Sunday on the Guano esplanade to vacate the last large space that remained in Ceuta with illegal tents made by migrants who arrived in the city during the massive entry on July 30 and 31.

More than twenty vans from the Police Intervention Unit (UIP) have begun to arrive at the esplanade after 8:00 a.m. Less than a thousand Moroccans have camped there since the eviction of the shanty settlements on the beaches of Trampolín and Benítez.

Evicting Guano does not mean removing all migrants from the streets completely. The esplanade is the last settlement with a significant concentration of Moroccans, but hundreds of them still wander the streets of neighborhoods such as El Príncipe or Los Rosales, others are hidden in the mountains or live in flats that the Spanish authorities are progressively dismantling.

After the police operations aimed at cleaning the beaches, hundreds of migrants stayed in Guano waiting for the authorities to also transport them in buses either to the Tarajal border in case they want to return to Morocco voluntarily or to the Temporary Attention Center for Foreigners (CATE), where they are registered and then relocated to one of the temporary reception facilities while the asylum procedures are resolved.

More than 500 migrants have remained in Guano, trying to overcome the cold and rains that have begun to hit the city for two weeks. Among them, around a hundred are minors, and days ago they demonstrated there to ask for their relocation to shelters.

Around 1,700 people were taken from the beaches of Benítez and Trampolín, of which the vast majority (with the exception of minors and some small groups of adults) chose to return to their country.

It was estimated that more than 3,500 people spent the night in Trampolín alone, so the rest scattered around the city to avoid getting on those buses. Many of them fled to the mountains, where they continue to this day.

Moroccans who have fled are aware of the enormous likelihood that their asylum requests will be denied. They also know that once they receive the final denial they will face an expulsion order from Spain for 5 years.

This is why many prefer to return voluntarily to Morocco, because they retain the aspiration to return in the future. Others remain hidden in the city without considering the option of returning or becoming affiliated and later requesting asylum. According to police sources, the latter hope to have an opportunity to cross irregularly to the peninsula.

Since the beginning of August, the Civil Guard has aborted several attempts to illegally cross into the peninsula in recreational boats. On occasions they have arrested those responsible for the illegal operation, who promised to take the migrants to the other side in exchange for money, and on other occasions the boats did not have a skipper, but had been acquired by the migrants themselves to try their luck.