Balearic warning did not predict Ceuta migration crisis

A police warning covering sea arrivals to mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands did not forecast the mass migrant crossings at Ceuta, Pedro Sánchez said in Madrid on Thursday. The Spanish prime minister admitted that “things failed” in the intelligence services and said they must improve. He insisted that no report received before the crisis predicted either its scale or its likelihood.

Sánchez said the police report, issued a week earlier, referred exclusively to maritime arrivals to mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, not to Ceuta’s border. A separate routine report from a European agency noted that the migration route was becoming more viable and listed quarterly detections, but did not foresee what followed in Ceuta.

The National Intelligence Centre, known as the CNI, sent two reports to several institutions in the month before the mass crossing. They said crossings around the breakwater were increasing and urged “utmost caution”.

On 29 July, a message sent to the Guardia Civil and the Government Delegation flagged a social-media call to try to cross into Ceuta the following day. Sánchez said the figure of 180,000 mentioned in that message was not a forecast of border crossings. It was the membership total of a Facebook group where the call was circulating.

A 29 July assessment by the National Centre for Immigration and Borders judged further swimming arrivals likely, but put their impact at low to medium. It rated a co-ordinated attempt involving swimming entries and jumps over the fence as low to medium probability.

Sánchez said the available resources were overwhelmed by the scale of the episode. He has ordered the publication of a dossier containing all the reports and said Spain will ask Europol for a dedicated mission to monitor irregular migration in Ceuta. Spain is also reviewing its joint co-ordination and warning systems with Morocco.

Topics: Police · Migration · Politics

Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com