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Rabat – The Civil Guard and the Moroccan Royal Navy have joined forces to collaborate and rescue dozens of irregular migrants who remained stranded on Isla de Tierra, a small Spanish Island located 50 meters from the coast of Morocco.
The migrants sailed from Morocco, hoping to reach Spain.
There were nearly 20 women among the migrants, with two women pregnant.
The list of the migrants also included two babies and four minors aged between 8 and 15.
The Spanish government authorized Moroccan services to repatriate the migrants.
The other migrants were also from Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The migrants are also requesting international protection.
The prospect of deporting migrants has provoked backlash among NGOs, which decry the idea of returning them without reviewing their asylum applications.
“They don’t want to listen to us, we want to ask for asylum in Spain, we have nowhere to go,” a migrant informed Caminando Fronteras, a human rights NGO dedicated to the protection of migrant rights.
The migrant said that she lost everything in Mali.
“We can’t go back home, please help us,” the migrant pleaded, quoted by Spanish news outlet El Pais.
NGOs are sending complaints to Spain, requesting an investigation to determine the likelihood of the migrants being transferred to Morocco.
Spain and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have been facing pressure due to the influx of irregular migrants recently.
The crisis between Morocco and Spain intensified in mid-May as a result of mass irregular migration.
Thousands of irregular migrants swam to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in May. The influx of migrants further intensified the crisis between Spain and Morocco amid the already intensifying tension due to the entry of Polisario leader Brahim Ghali to the Spanish territory for hospitalization with falsified documents.
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Morocco has been mobilizing all its efforts to combat irregular migration and human trafficking. The EU has long considered Morocco a strategic partner in the field of migration management.
The European border control agency (Frontex) commended Morocco’s efforts in migration management.
“We have more or less the same level of arrivals as last year, which shows that Moroccan authorities have even strenghtened their management of departures from Morocco and have taken measures to combat criminal activities linked to human trafficking,” Frontex’ executive director Fabrice Leggeri explained.
Since 2017, Morocco’s security services dismantled over 5,000 trafficking networks and rescued over 80,500 migrants at sea.
During the same period , Morocco has also prevented more than 14,000 unauthorized migration attempts, according to data from the Moroccan government.
