Migrants looking down from the mountain behind the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco. Credit: Andrea Pettrachin/IPS

By Andrea Pettrachin
CEUTA, Sep 4 2015 (IPS)

In the middle of the mountains behind the border fence of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, and eight kilometres from the nearest Moroccan village of Fnideq, an uncertain number of migrants live in the woods. No one knows exactly how many they are but charity workers in Melilla, Spain’s other enclave in Morocco, say they could be in their thousands.

Ceuta is one of the main (and few) ‘doors’ leading from northern Africa to the territory of the European Union, and is a ’door’ that has been closed since the end of the 1990s, when the Spanish authorities started to build a tripe six-metre fence topped with barbed wire that surrounds the whole enclave, as in Melilla.

In the past, those waiting in the mountains for their turn to try to reach Spain had been able to build something resembling a normal life. They put up tents and at least were able to sleep relatively peacefully at night.Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities

That all ended after 2012, when the Moroccan police started to burn down the camps and periodically sweep the mountainside, arresting any migrants they found, charged with having illegally entered the country.

These actions were the result of agreements between the Moroccan and Spanish governments, after Spain had asked Morocco to control migration flows.

The most tragic raid so far by the Moroccan police took place last year on Gurugu Mountain which looks down on Melilla. Five migrants were killed, 40 wounded and 400 removed to a desert area on the border with Algeria. According to the migrants, the wounded were not cured and were left to their own destiny.

Today, the migrants are forced to remain mostly hidden in small groups among the trees or in small caverns, and they know that all attempts to pass the Spanish border are almost certain to fail and end up with arrest by the Moroccan authorities.

They live, in their words, “like animals” and when speaking with outsiders are clearly ashamed by their condition, apologising for being dirty and badly-dressed.

The first thing many of them tell you in French is that they are students and that before having to leave their countries they were studying mathematics, economics or engineering at university.

Many of them are from Guinea, one of the countries most seriously affected by the Ebola epidemic, others come from Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, all countries characterised by political turmoil of various types.

All of them have been forced to live in these woods for months or even years, waiting for their chance to pass the border fence.

The statistics show that some of them will certainly die in their attempts to reach Spain – either on the heavily fortified fences which encircle the enclaves or out at sea in a small boat or trying to swim to a Spanish beach.

Some of them will finally make it to Spain, perhaps after five or six failed attempts. In that case they will have overcome the first hurdle, escaping the “push-back operations” by the Spanish Guardia Civil, but they will still face the possibility of forced repatriation, particularly if they come from countries with which Spain has a repatriation agreement.

Many of them, however, will finally give up and decide to remain somewhere in Morocco, destined to a life of continuous uncertainty due to their irregular position in the country. You can meet them and listen to their stories in the main Moroccan cities, especially in the north. In most cases, they had escaped death in their attempts to reach Spain and do not want to risk their lives any longer.

Meanwhile a report on ‘Refugee Persons in Spain and Europe” published at the end of May by the non-governmental Spanish Commission for Refugees (CEAR), denounces how sub-Saharan migrants are dissuaded from seeking asylum in Spain, even if coming from countries in conflict such as Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo or Somalia, once they realise that they are likely to be forced to remain for months in a Centre for Temporary Residence of Immigrants (CETI) in Ceuta or Melilla.

In Melilla, for example, those who apply for asylum cannot leave the enclave until a decision has been taken on their application. Unlike Syrian refugees whose application takes no more than two months, CEAR said the average time to reach a decision for sub-Saharan Africans is one and a half years.

The CEAR report is only one of a long list of recent criticisms of the Spanish government’s migration policies from numerous NGOs and international organisations.

The main target of these criticisms has been the Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana) passed this year by the Spanish Parliament with only the votes of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The aim was to give legal cover to the so called devoluciones en caliente, the “push-back operations” against migrants carried out by the Spanish frontier authorities in Ceuta and Melilla in violation of international and European law.

On the Spanish mainland, said the CEAR report, migrant’s right of asylum is seriously undermined by the bureaucratic lengths of application procedures and the political choices of the Spanish authorities.

Calls from CEAR and other NGOs to end “push-back operations” seem very unlikely to be taken into consideration soon by the Spanish government and Parliament, in view of the general elections later this year.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Juani Valdivia, José López and Santiago González in the office of the Guardia Civil immigrant support team (EDATI) in Mijas, Málaga. Credit: Inés Benítez/IPS

By Inés Benítez
MALAGA, Spain, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

They are members of Spain’s Guardia Civil. But instead of pursuing undocumented immigrants like the rest of the police in Spain, they are there to defend them from the crimes to which they often fall victim.

“We frequently dress as civilians and go around the province to gather complaints in Guardia Civil [Spain’s federal military-status police force] barracks, and in homes, hospitals and non-governmental organisations [NGOs],” Santiago González, a member of the Guardia Civil immigrant support team (EDATI) in the southern region of Málaga, told IPS.

The regional Málaga EDATI unit, made up of three men and one woman, began to function in 2006 and is one of the 13 EDATI units operating since 2000 along Spain’s Mediterranean coast, from Barcelona in the northeast to Huelva in the southwest. All of the units must have at least one female member.

Their mission is not to fight irregular immigration, but to advise undocumented immigrants on their rights, help them fill out paperwork, such as applications for residency in Spain, and work against those who attempt to cheat, mistreat or exploit them.

Unlike the rest of Spain’s police, including the Guardia Civil itself, the EDATI units neither arrest nor deport immigrants.

For that reason, immigrants can turn to them without fear in order to file complaints and reports about theft, lost passports, exploitative labour conditions, the sale of fake work contracts, abuses or rape.

But actually, undocumented female immigrants who report gender violence cannot be deported, since an amendment to the law on rights and freedoms of immigrants in Spain was passed in 2011.

“It is often the rich who exploit them the most,” González said.

For example, a Russian magnate who owns a mansion in the luxury resort city of Marbella on the coast in the Málaga region kept undocumented household staff from Tibet locked in “without money or food” during his sometimes lengthy trips outside of Spain, EDATI agent Juani Valdivia told IPS.

In one of its latest operations, the Málaga unit dismantled an illegal business set up by three women who offered work in domestic service over the internet to undocumented immigrants, who they charged a commission for their services.

Stories like these are common. “In Málaga we work above all with South American immigrants, mainly Paraguayans, and with people from Senegal,” said another EDATI agent, José López.

Nationwide, the EDATI units assisted 10,700 immigrants in 2012, most of them men from North Africa, Eastern Europe or South America, the Guardia Civil website reports. A total of 12,000 operations were carried out, 11,200 at the initiative of the agents themselves and the rest in response to complaints filed.

In this southern European country of 47 million there were 5.4 million foreign nationals living legally in 2012, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Official data also shows that 573,712 immigrants without permits to live in Spain are “empadronados” or registered with municipal governments. There are also an indefinite number of undocumented immigrants who have not registered.

According to the Interior Ministry, last year 3,804 immigrants were intercepted in the attempt to enter the country in unseaworthy boats – 30 percent fewer than in 2011 and less than 10 percent of the 39,180 who were intercepted in 2006.

The ministry also reported that 26,457 undocumented immigrants were deported in 2012 – 16.3 percent fewer than the previous year.

Minors under 18 cannot be deported from Spain.

The ultimate obverse of the EDATI units is the decision by the government of right-wing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to install razor-sharp concertina wire, starting in late October, in the valley that separates the Spanish city of Melilla in North Africa from Morocco – a move that has drawn fire from the European Union and human rights groups.

“There are lawyers and businesspeople who are shocked that as ‘guardias civiles’ we don’t detain undocumented immigrants. At first it was even hard for people on the force to accept it,” González said in an interview in his office in the seaside town of Mijas.

“It’s also important for immigrants to get to know us better, and to trust us,” he added.

Fear of deportation makes many immigrants reluctant to file complaints, despite the frequency of bad working conditions, false promises of work contracts and regularisation, and supposed lawyers and advisers who demand large sums of money for obtaining documents that are sometimes cost-free or who sell fake job contracts.

“It’s others committing crimes against them,” said Rafael Porta, another member of the Málaga EDATI unit, during seminars and activities on immigration held Oct. 26.

“When you work with immigrants, you become almost more of an ‘NGO’ type than a police officer,” said Porta, who is studying Arabic to be able to communicate better with the people he is tasked to protect.

Hana El Rharnati, a 28-year-old who works in the Moroccan Association for the Integration of Immigrants in Málaga, has suffered fear of deportation.

She went to EDATI when she was an undocumented immigrant, after she was turned down for a renewal of her student residency permit and her purse was robbed on the bus. “They filed the complaint for me,” she said.

El Rharnati, who has been living in Spain since she was 18, says the members of EDATI are “a mix of social worker and ‘guardia civil’ who have a human touch, not so administrative and bureaucratic.”

She said there will be no decline in crimes against undocumented immigrants as long as the requirements for living and working in Spain are “so tough.”

Foreign nationals who want to legalise their immigration status must prove that they have lived constantly in the country for at least three years, show that they have no criminal record, and have a work contract for at least one year, signed by an employer.

Without so many requirements, “immigrants wouldn’t feel forced to enter into false marriages or buy ‘empadronamientos’ [municipal registrations] or job contracts,” she said.

She argued that it was contradictory for the authorities to set rigid requisites for obtaining or renewing residency permits while employing Guardia Civil agents to combat attempts to swindle or cheat them.

The minimum fine for employing an undocumented immigrant is 10,000 euros [13,000 dollars], but “levying fines is not the solution because someone else will replace them and they will continue to cheat immigrants,” the young Moroccan woman said.

Miguel Pajares, who specialises in immigration issues, told IPS that the EDATI units and protocols of best practices for security forces were important. “But there is still much to be done,” he added, “given that the Aliens Act takes primacy over the protection of the basic rights of people.”