“Where is the CETI?”, several young Moroccans from a group of 16 people, were asking at ten in the morning this Wednesday around the port of Ceuta. Apparently, they were all adults. Four of them were still wearing wetsuits. Others simply wore swim shorts and showed their bare torsos. One had left his fins lying in the middle of the sidewalk, about fifty meters from where they posed for photos for EL MUNDO.
“It took us five hours to swim from a beach in Castillejos [the Moroccan town on the other side of the border]. We were very cold, but it was worth it. Almost all of us are from Tetouan, Tangier…”, explains, in broken Spanish, one of the irregular immigrants in this group who has just swum across the maritime border between Ceuta and Morocco.
The young man clarifies that they did not manage to reach any Ceuta beach, but were rescued by Maritime Rescue during the journey. The Salvamar Atria, based in Ceuta, has not stopped rescuing immigrants since the early hours of last Tuesday, when the current wave of immigrants crossing by sea, which started about 10 days ago, intensified.
“Now they have told us to go to the CETI (Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants). How do we get there?”, he insists in his question. “We want to eat and rest, brother,” says another Moroccan from this group. He holds a packet of cookies in his hand, which he begins to share among his travel companions.
Very close by, next to the taxi stand at the port, a Red Cross nurse is treating the wounds of a man who, according to him, was beaten by a Moroccan gendarme the night before, before managing to jump into the sea from a beach in Castillejos.
Ceuta is experiencing a situation similar to that of May 2021, when around 14,000 people crossed on foot and by sea from Morocco in just four days. Now, with the border sealed because access to the autonomous city is only possible by visa or by illegally jumping the perimeter fence, most arrivals are happening by swimming. Many are minors. They are taken to emergency reception centers set up in the Tarajal warehouses.
Adults end up in the CETI, which has an official capacity of 512 places. On Tuesday there were already 694 people inside its facilities. However, outside there are between 800 and a thousand more waiting, although there are no official figures since the flow of arrivals is constant.
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The access road to the immigrant reception center is a coming and going of people. Many of them rest lying on the asphalt or on red blankets with Red Cross insignia. Others shelter from the sun under makeshift tents made with sheets and cardboard.
A recent Supreme Court ruling has confirmed that Spain cannot carry out ‘hot returns’ by sea of immigrants to Morocco. “It is inevitable to think that there is a ‘pull effect’ for that reason,” says a civil guard while helping a young man out of a rocky area near the Tarajal border. “The CETI is a pressure cooker. Hundreds keep arriving every day,” adds the officer in conversation with the journalist. “Morocco is not cooperating. If they wanted to, this would not happen.”
The arrival of swimmers from Morocco does not seem to slow down. Although the boats of the Civil Guard and the Moroccan Royal Navy have a constant and active presence, day and night, in the waters that mark the maritime border between the two countries, dozens of floating devices adrift from those who have already managed to reach land can be seen from the coast closest to the neighboring country. If any immigrant is spotted in those waters, the Civil Guard ‘marks’ their location to their Moroccan counterparts to pick them up, although if the situation is extreme, they are rescued by the Spanish police forces.
The president of Ceuta, Juan Vivas, appeared before the media this Wednesday. He described themigration situation as “serious” since all the city’s reception services are overwhelmed.
“We are living an extremely complicated situation,” Juan Vivas said. According to him, 1,500 immigrants have arrived by sea in recent days, and both the CETI and the minors’ reception centers are saturated. “There is no room for anyone else and more than 200 people enter every day.” Many of them, as witnessed by this newspaper, wander the streets of the autonomous city.