The State wants to reduce the places to accommodate migrants in Ceuta even though there are still thousands of them on the street

BarcelonaCeuta collapsed this summer with the massive entry of thousands of migrants, and three months later it has still not returned to normal. This weekend, the autonomous city government warned that there are more than 7,000 people housed in the various temporary camps set up by the State, but that those who would have remained outside these facilities should also be added. Their estimate is that there are between 3,000 and 4,000 people sleeping on the streets, of whom half a thousand are minors, almost 100 days after crossing the border illegally at the end of July. In contrast, this Monday, the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, announced that the Spanish government is already working to reduce the number of temporary places that have been enabled to respond to the humanitarian crisis and that they will dismantle the resources "as soon as possible".

For the minister, reducing these extraordinary places will be a very important sign that normality is returning to Ceuta, which has gone from 500 reception places to the more than 7,500 current ones to respond to the large number of people who entered the city. Despite the preparations being made by the State to take steps towards normality, the regional government considers that the situation remains far from stabilizing. On the one hand, they denounce that no return has been executed via the ordinary route or, at the very least, that no data has been provided on these operations. On the other hand, they put the figure at 3,626 minors hosted in the Spanish enclave's resources, a figure that exceeds the ordinary capacity of the centers by 125 times, and they attribute part of this situation to the lack of response from Morocco regarding the pending repatriation files, which it puts at around seventy.

Saiz, who participated this Monday in the World in Progress (WIP) forum of the Prisa Group in Barcelona, assured that about 13,000 people have voluntarily returned to Morocco. "These are files that no longer need to be concluded because these returns have taken place," the minister stated. The National Police carried out an operation to make the first returns to Morocco of migrants without the right to asylum who were being hosted at the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants (CETI). There were about twenty of them. The new return orders that the security force will be notifying can be appealed. The government of Ceuta, however, continues to demand a schedule and data on the pending files, also in the judicial sphere.

The minister has claimed the role of social entities in the management of reception centers. In the harshest moments of the humanitarian crisis in the city, the ARA confirmed that it was these entities and the city's residents who provided a response to the needs in the face of the inaction of the Spanish executive. This Monday, Saiz defended the government's response in Ceuta and accused other political groups of wanting to respond to this crisis out of hatred. "The government of Spain, the response it has given from the first moment, it has given it from something as elemental as legality, of course, but also humanity".

Accuses the PP of xenophobia

In this sense, Saiz has criticized that the PP "has embraced the harshest xenophobia" in recent years and is worried that it might win on November 29th due to the consequences it could have in terms of migration. "It worries me and I will work so that it does not happen. It also worries millions of citizens who have stopped living in fear," she said in relation to the massive regulation they have deployed this year. The minister believes that there is a "gap" between the perception of migrants and the reality in Spain.

"Many people think that there are many more migrants than there are, that they receive many more subsidies than they actually receive, that there is much more unemployment than there is," she said. Faced with this scenario, she urged to "combat populisms" that try to introduce these narratives with data: "It is not enough not to be racist, but one must be openly anti-racist and be in the streets and on social media."