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Join on Telegram Rabat – Moroccan security services thwarted over 366,000 irregular migration attempts to Europe over the past five years, new data shows.
According to Morocco’s Ministry of Interior, the number includes 70,781 aborted attempts last year.
In May 2023, Moroccan authorities thwarted more than 25,000 irregular migration attempts, the same data showed.
The operations include the rescue of over 90,000 irregular migrants over the past five years.
Over 12,000 migrants were rescued from the sea in 2022. At the end of May 2023 alone Moroccan authorities rescued 3,150 migrants.
The country’s authorities also dismantled 290 criminal networks involved in irregular migration in 2022. A Large number of irregular migration networks estimated at 117 were also dismantled by the end of May 2023, the data added.
The number brings the total of dismantled irregular migration networks to 1,500 over the past five years.
The ministry also provided data on the irregular migration attempts in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
According to the data, authorities aborted a hundred failed attempts during the last five years, involving 17,500 irregular migration candidates.
In 2022, attempted irregular migration towards Ceuta and Melilla totaled 16 against only one attempt during the past five months of 2023.
The ministry attributed the decrease in the number of attempts to the “strengthening of the system to fight against irregular migration.”
In May, the Spanish Ministry of Interior hailed cooperation with Morocco in the field, stressing that the flow of irregular immigration to the Spanish territory through the North African country dropped by 36% year on year at the end of April 2023.
