The Ministry of the Interior has raised the maritime protection level of the Port of Ceuta to level 2, where the Government has set up a camp to accommodate 1,000 of the nearly 10,000 immigrants who remain in the city after the assault on July 30, through an order from the Secretary of State for Security, according to EL MUNDO.
Read more Bad times for the chief of staff
The measure, which involves segregating the “humanitarian zone” from the “passenger boarding” area, increasing the presence of port police, and intensifying access controls, comes after several “incidents” occurred at the site between migrants and port users, according to eyewitness sources and the police union Jupol.
The use of the infrastructure was authorized on September 5 by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, thus employing a space to accommodate migrants while their asylum or expulsion files are processed in which the Government did not need to reach an agreement with the local Executive, which in fact ended up opposing the measure.
However, Transport authorized the Ministry of Migrations the temporary occupation of approximately 16,000 square meters of the La Puntilla dock for the humanitarian care of the 1,000 immigrants, who had already been camping in Ceuta for more than a month without the central Government controlling the situation.
At the dock, even before that, police controls were taking place to prevent migrants, as often happens, from sneaking into the undersides of trucks traveling to the Peninsula on ferries, or hanging from the ropes of the ships.
In any case, the concentration of immigrants when the authorities began to set up the camp soon started to generate problems. The Ministry justifies the increase in security by admitting that the establishment of the camp “substantially alters the ordinary operating and protection conditions of the port, increasing the risks associated with access control, segregation between restricted and operational areas, protection of critical and sensitive infrastructures, as well as the safety of operations”.
The union Jupol, for its part, denounces a “serious deterioration of security” at the site, “especially in areas linked to passenger ships”, and some “chaos” for regular port users, pointing out that since Thursday night “no one can access the port area without an accreditation card, a restriction that is affecting the ordinary functioning of the port and prevents delivery personnel and workers who previously accessed normally from doing so“.
Jupol maintains that the Ministry’s raising of the protection level is the “acceptance of this insecurity”, “even more serious considering that we are at level 4 out of 5 of the anti-terrorist alert”, these sources said.
“You cannot install a settlement of these characteristics in a strategic infrastructure, then raise the maritime protection level because risks increase, and finally expect the police and port workers to bear the consequences of a political decision without the necessary reinforcement of resources and personnel. We demand a permanent and sufficient police deployment,” said union sources, who see a “constant accounting engineering” in the Interior Ministry, “always adding personnel, but not admitting that others are withdrawn, which leaves citizens defenseless”.
Read more The Spaniards training to survive the end of the world: «There is a boom because of fear»
