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ARCHIVED - A further 218 irregular immigrants reached the Murcian coastline this weekend
Another wave of 18 boats took advantage of the calm weather to make the crossing
Image; Archive; Escombreras where the migrants are tested for Covid-19 by Cruz Roja
Coastal rescue service and the Guardia Civil had a busy weekend intercepting boatloads of irregular immigrants attempting to enter Europe illegally via the Murcian coastline.
In the 48 hour period of Saturday and Sunday, a total of 218 people in 18 boats were intercepted, most of them in the area close to Monte de las Cenizas in Cartagena.
The first two boats (called pateras in Spanish) appeared on Saturday morning, the first with 10 passengers on board south of Monte de las Cenizas, in Cartagena, and a second reaching the beach of El Gorguel, on the coastline between Cartagena and La Unión.By the time the Guardia Civíl reached the beach, six of the migrants had disappeared off into the surrounding area and were subsequently detained, whilst four migrants had remained with the boat and were also detained.
Throughout the day and into the early hours of Sunday morning, the boats continued to arrive; 218 migrants and 18 boats detected in total.
All of the migrants are reported to be of Algerian nationalty, which makes them irregular economic migrants, not refugees, and therefore subject to expulsion orders and repatriation to their country of origin.
All have been taken to the Escombreras docks where they will be tested for coronavirus and hospitalised/quarantined as appropriate.
Although the number of migrants targeting the Murcia region as an entry point has been more noticeable in the last 4 months, the overall totals of migrants entering Spain via the Western Mediterranean route has fallen considerably, mainly due to the almost complete absence of Moroccans making the journey to enter Europe via the Spanish coastline.
Frontex, the EU border force, reports that there were nearly 1 600 detections of illegal border crossings on the Western Mediterranean migratory route in August 2020, 7% less than in the previous month.
The total for the first eight months of 2020, was nearly half the figure from the same period in the previous year at 8,200, down 46%.
During September, there were 9% more detections than in August and by the end of the month the total for the first nine months of 2020 stood at nearly 11 000, or 40% less than in the same period in the previous year, due principally to the absence of any activity during the lockdown period.
However, Algerians have accounted for nearly two-thirds of all detections on the route this year, and the August figure was six times the figure from a year ago, which ties in with the deteriorating economic and political situation in Algeria, and the border closure in Morocco, which is preventing many of the sub-Saharan migrants getting into Morocco in the first place.
The distance for Algerians to the Spanish coastline favours the Murcia Region and Alicante as chosen destinations, the increase in Algerians logically leading to an increased level of traffic to Murcia.
During the last week there was a significant surge in the number of pateras reaching Spain, with over 1500 migrants reaching Spain right along the Mediterranean coast, including routes to the Canary and Balearic islands, the Canary Islands struggling to cope with the influx. There is no migrant transit centre on the islands, and the approach of autumn is making it particularly difficult to house the migrants who must be quarantined due to the number arriving with Covid-19, so the migrants are being sent to transit centres on the mainland, some of them to Murcia.
NB: The migrants are referred to as “irregular immigrants” by the EU; the Spanish media tend to call them “sin papeles” meaning those with no paperwork entering the country illegally, others refer to them as illegal migrants. The phrase irregular migrants is used on MT in an attempt to convey that these are not refugees, but economic migrants, in this case from Algeria, entering Spain and the EU in an illegal fashion, without passports or documentation and without any legal right to enter the EU as Algeria is not an EU member and there is no migration agreement between the two countries.
Further reading
EU Action plan against Migrant Smuggling 2015/2020 Click to read
EU Directive f2008/115/EC Common standards and procedures in EU Member States for returning illegally staying third country nationals. Click to read
FRONTEX European coast guard and border control agency. This explains more about the migration issue and shows the different routes taken. Our routes here are the "Western Mediterranean" routes used principally by Moroccans And Algerians.Click Frontex
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