Thousands of African migrants swam to the shores of the Spanish territory of Ceuta on Thursday, leading to a chaotic scene that officials are scrambling to contain.
Dramatic video shows the moment the migrants, who are mainly young men from Morocco, swam onto the shores with some using inflatable inner tubes before marching down the beach and through the nearby roads. The border breach comes after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that migrants crossing by sea cannot be immediately deported.
“It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion,” a spokesman for Spain’s Guardia Civil police told Reuters.
Juan Jesús Vivas, the leader of Ceuta, urged the Spanish government to make a national emergency declaration and deploy the military to quell the migrant invasion, according to Reuters. Spain’s interior ministry said it couldn’t declare a national emergency as it doesn’t view migration flows as a risk to national security, the Associated Press reported.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the country “is fully committed to providing an immediate response to the situation in Ceuta” and that they’re “mobilizing all necessary resources, working with Moroccan and international authorities, and preparing the necessary measures to restore normalcy as soon as possible.”
“I just conveyed this to President @JuanVivasLara. This is the moment to build solutions, with responsibility and cooperation,” Sánchez wrote on X Thursday.
It’s not the first time Ceuta — which, along with Melilla, Spain, are the European Union’s only land borders with Africa — has experienced a mass migration event. In May 2021, the Spanish territory saw the arrival of roughly 8,000 migrants during a period of just two days, according to the AP.
The situation doesn’t appear to be coming to an end anytime soon as migrants continue staging at the Moroccan city of Fnideq to prepare to enter Spain, migrant rights activist Zakaria Zarroqui told Reuters.
“The situation remains out of control as we speak,” Zarroqui said.
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