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Date Published: 10/05/2021

ARCHIVED - Nearly 400 irregular migrants reached Almeria province during the weekend

The flow of irregular migrants to Almeria in Andalucia continues and further arrivals were reported along the coasts of Murcia and Alicante province

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Nearly 400 irregular migrants reached Almeria province during the weekend

The problem of irregular migrants crossing from North Africa to Spain by boat has been ongoing for several years, with regular "pateras" or small migrant baots making the dangerous crossing from a number of departure points to reach either the Canary Islands, Andalucía, region of Murcia or Alicante province.

During the last couple of years the journeys are becoming increasingly co-ordinated by organised criminal gangs, operating principally from Algeria and Morocco, bringing boatloads of paying irregualr economic migrants across to Spain in search of work.

The gangs recruit not only drivers, but also passengers in Morocco and Algeria, taking advantage of the high unemployment and political disenchantment to recruit passengers willing to pay up to 2,500 euros for passage across the water, arranging pick-ups on the Spanish coastline once the boats have reached the coast and in many cases, onward transportation to other destinations within Europe, the provision of fake identity papers and illegal work.

Increasingly, the boats depart from Algeria or Morocco in groups, in order to spread the resources of the Spanish authorities as widely as possible to limit the possibility of being intercepted, and target different areas of the vast Spanish coastline, so it is common to find that boats will arrive simultaneously in different provinces along the coastline in "batches".

Between Thursday (May 6) and Sunday (May 9) 398 irregular migrants reached the Almería coastline in 25 boats.

Eight migrants were also intercepted off the Alicante province coastline at Alfaz del Pi and 82 Algerians were detected along the coast of the Murcia region during the same time period.

During the covid pandemic it has become standard practice to PCR test all those migrants detected and intercepted and quarantine anyone who travelled in a boat with a covid positive.

The Spanish authorities detected one positive case of Covid and 21 suspected cases among the 398 people who arrived between May 6 and 9 in 25 boats.

Health sources and the Red Cross said that the 22 people have now been placed in quarantine in a youth hostel which has been adapted for use as a quarantine centre for homeless people. None of the migrants is showing any signs of ill health.

As has been the case on previous recent occasions, the large number of arrivals overwhelmed the emergency response teams (ERIE) from the Almeria Red Cross, who initially assisted the migrants and carried out medical assessments, but with the number of migrants exceeding 150 for two days in a row, migrants were housed in the temporary attention centre for foreigners (CATE) designed to hold only 230 people, leading to complaints of overcrowding from both staff and immigrants.

The authorities attempt to repatriate as many of the irregular migrants as possible, but the success rate is low due to the impossibility of proving where many have actually come from and who they are; under EU law, once the migrants have exceeded the maximum period permitted for their detention, they must be freed to continue their journey.

As it is illegal for these "sin papeles" or "people with no papers" to work legally in Spain, they are frequently exploited in low-paid jobs; the coastguard, immigration authorities and the Guardia Civíl wage an endless battle against the traffickers with varying degrees of success; as fast as one group is dimantled, another begins operations, the lucrative earnings for piloting a boat across to Spain irresistible to low-paid workers from the African mainland.

Image: Archive Guardia Civíl