Spain begins to return the 800 Moroccan minors who entered Ceuta in May

BarcelonaThe National Police has activated, this Friday early in the afternoon, an operation to return to Morocco about 800 minors from the country that entered Ceuta alone in mid-May. The operation has begun with the transfer, in groups of 15, of the 234 teenagers who were in the sports center of Santa Amelia, according to what police sources confirmed to Europa Press and the organization No Name Kitchen (Ceuta) to ARA. The repatriation operation will not include minors considered vulnerable, according to the same sources.

The Spanish government delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, had announced on Monday that in a matter of "days" relations between Spain and Morocco were once again "very good", after the change at the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

From the No Name Kitchen organization they explain to ARA that this Monday and Thursday some transfers were already made. Amaia, a volunteer of this NGO in Ceuta, explains that this made them suspicious - and today confirms that they have made the first "return of a group of 15 underage boys of Moroccan origin" in the Santa Amelia sports center. "Inside a white van, they have moved them from the sports center to the border and they made them enter Morocco without legal assistance and violating all the rights and the best interest of the minor", explains this volunteer.

NGOs such as Save The Children, meanwhile, had warned that the repatriation of minors would only be viable "in specific cases". "As a universal solution it would be illegal from the point of view of the regulations applied by the Spanish government and, in addition, we would be failing to comply with a moral duty: simply impossible", warned the general director of the organization, Andrés Conde.