Spain to care for lone migrant children, as EU Commission joins far-right calls to send them back

Spain has agreed to temporarily transfer 500 vulnerable minors to its mainland from Ceuta, three days after the EU Commission joined rightwing Spanish politicians in calls for all migrants there to be sent back to Morocco.

The fate of migrant children sleeping on Ceuta’s streets in their thousands has been the subject of polarising debate in Madrid: One one hand, Spanish law mandates automatic state protection of unaccompanied minors, but on the other hand, a rightwing-dominated parliament has called for all irregular arrivals to be returned.

And the EU weighed into the toxic situation on Monday (18 August), taking the side of the right.

“The expectation is that all those who remain in Ceuta illegally will be returned,” commission spokesperson Markus Lammert said, referring specifically to the unaccompanied children and teenagers still in Spain’s North African enclave.

But Lammert’s views aside, the Spanish Immigration Act says such minors ought to be placed under the care of the child-protection services of the autonomous community where they arrived.