The Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, went this Friday to the rooms in which more than 300 asylum seekers are currently crowded at the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport. “It remains necessary to find a solution for the location of these people while their asylum request is resolved. It is urgent that an adequate space be enabled in decent conditions,” Gabilondo said after his visit.
While the Interior reactivated the disinfection and cleaning work due to the persistence of bedbugs in the facilities – where this Friday 314 people were overcrowded – and the workers of the Office of Refugee Assistance (OAR) tried to expedite the procedures for resolving the requests of international protection, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has traveled to Rabat to analyze with his Moroccan counterpart, Abdelouafi Laftit, the cooperation between both countries in the control of irregular immigration. Marlaska has admitted that there is “fraudulent” use of the flights that depart from Casablanca to Latin American countries with a stopover in Barajas, and has stated that he is studying the possibility of requesting transit visas for these passengers and, thus, avoiding the saturation of asylum seekers in the Spanish capital.
The Minister of the Interior thus accepts the proposal of the Unified Police Union (SUP), which has been denouncing since last weekend—when a second escape of 17 people occurred by breaking a window in the asylum rooms—the situation of overflow and unhealthiness faced by those detained in those rooms in Barajas and the police who guard them. Previously, on Twelfth Night, nine other asylum seekers had escaped through a false ceiling.
As the Ombudsman has observed, “the number of people waiting for an appropriate space to be made available is so important that the existing difficulties in adequately addressing their requests can be understood.” And he added: “Although attention is given to them with the utmost dedication, this is insufficient to provide an adequate response to each and every one of these people, which is not limited to improvements to the facilities.” In the last few weeks, Gabilondo has held meetings with the minister of the Ministry of Migration in this regard and has initiated actions with the General Directorate of the Police (Ministry of the Interior).
Previously, the Ombudsman had visited the Madrid Foreigners Detention Center (CIE of Aluche), after the works to improve that infrastructure. And there he has been able to confirm that “the current occupancy level is well below its capacity.” The CIE was precisely the place where the Interior tried to transfer fifty asylum seekers from Barajas last Wednesday, with a court order. However, the appeal presented by the Prosecutor’s Office on the grounds that this measure “contravenes the rights” of those detained in Barajas paralyzed the movement. And only four people who had the administrative status of “inadmissible” were transferred.
In statements to the media from Rabat, on his first trip abroad after his confirmation as Minister of the Interior, Marlaska explained that these “fraudulent uses” of flights from Morocco occur during stopovers for those departing from Casablanca to destination to Latin American countries for which visas are not required. And it is upon arriving in Madrid that many of the passengers take the opportunity to ask for international protection.
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“They say they are going to Sao Paulo, upon arrival in Madrid they get rid of the documentation and in Barajas many try to pass themselves off as minors,” police sources at the airport maintain. “With the transit visa they would have to go to the embassy, their fingerprints would be taken, they would pay fees, etc.,” they detail. “In the case of the Senegalese, they do the same: they get rid of their documentation upon arrival and claim to come from an African country in conflict to ask for international protection. But if they came with a transit visa we would know who they are from the beginning and they would not be able to impersonate anyone,” they warn.
Working with Morocco
“If transit visas have to be introduced, they will be introduced in the proper way to avoid these uses,” declared the minister, who stressed that this “does not contradict” the legal guarantees for asylum seekers and has assured that he is already working with Morocco to tackle the problem. At this point, he has said that the solution also involves “taking measures” at the Barajas airport to guarantee the rights of these people. When asked about the successive complaints from the SUP, Marlaska pointed out that the Government is working “intensely” to solve the situation.
The Minister of the Interior has extended this work to the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior, praising the “extraordinary” work carried out at the Casablanca airport, which has a Spanish officer aware of this problem. Furthermore, he has said that there is already a “high degree of effectiveness” of both countries against irregular immigration and that what they both want is to “improve” in this area. Part of his meeting, as detailed by the minister, has focused on irregular migration networks. “In the end, addressing irregular migration means saving lives,” stressed Marlaska, who also spoke about the fight against terrorism and Spanish-Moroccan cooperation, which last year allowed 14 police operations with 80 detainees.
The Office of Asylum and Refuge (OAR) of the Ministry of the Interior received 163,218 applications for international protection in 2023, 37% more than the previous year and the highest number since the creation of the office in 1992, according to provisional data closed to December 31. These figures place Spain as the third country receiving international protection in the European Union. By nationality, the country of origin of the largest number of applicants has been Venezuela, with 60,534 requests, 37 percent of the total, followed by Colombia (53,564) and Peru (14,306). The three countries concentrate 78.6 percent of the total registered files.
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