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Sunday, 23 May 2021 (YJC) _ Hundreds of children and teenagers are crammed into warehouses in the Spanish north African after thousands of migrants arrived in the city.
Hundreds of children and teenagers are crammed into warehouses or sleeping rough in city parks in the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta as their fate remains up in the air days after thousands of migrants arrived in the city.
More than 8,000 migrants last week crossed into the seven-square mile territory – many of them swimming or piling into flimsy inflatable rafts to skirt the breakwater that marks the border with Morocco – amid reports that Moroccan officials had relaxed controls over the border last week . At least two people died attempting the crossing.
About 7,000 of those who crossed into Spain have since been sent back across the border, according to Spanish officials, but the city has identified 438 children and teenagers who arrived unaccompanied by adults and more are being rounded up as social services workers scour the city’s parks and streets.
“We’re working to address the issue of children who have come alone,” Spain’s minister for social rights, Ione Belarra told Spanish broadcaster RTVE. “It’s important to understand that we’re seeing children that are much younger than the usual – children of seven, eight, nine years old.”
Many of them have been sent to warehouses turned into shelters in order to carry out 10 days of coronavirus quarantine under police watch.
Several minors who have managed to slip out of the warehouses have complained that the crowded, inadequate facilities meant that they had gone days without hot meals – surviving instead on provisions such as apples, yogurt and sandwiches – while a lack of beds had left many of them sleeping on the floor.
“I would prefer to sleep in an abandoned car, like I did the first few days here. It’s more comfortable, ” one youth told ElDiario.es. “I want to get out of here,” another told El País, after capturing video that appeared to show a bathroom floor covered in excrement after the toilets had stopped working.
Officials in Ceuta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many more minors are believed to be sleeping rough in parks and on the streets of Ceuta without any financial resources or adult supervision. Officials in the city of 85,000 have pleaded for help from Spain’s regions. “We cannot cope, there are too many children,” Carlos Rontome, one of the city’s deputy leaders, told Spanish national radio this week.
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