Spain Deploys Military After 60,000 African Migrants Breach Border in 24 Hours
As many as 60,000 illegal migrants from Africa have swarmed the Spanish territory of Ceuta after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled migrants intercepted at sea while trying to reach the area cannot be kicked out.
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The ruling issued earlier this month — which applies to the Spanish autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla — said the migrants cannot be expelled under the territories’ special border-rejection regime.
Migrants climbed over border fences or swam to the territory’s shores. At least 34 people died trying to enter Ceuta.
The flood of migrants has overwhelmed the territory of Ceuta on the north African coast, which itself has a population of just 85,000.
“It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion,” a spokesperson for Spain’s Guardia Civil police told Reuters on Thursday.
Spain has deployed 200 specialized police officers and 60 troops from the mainland to help Ceuta’s forces manage the chaos. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain visited Ceuta on Friday and condemned “mafias involved in human trafficking that deceive many young people, many of whom ultimately lose their lives.”
President Trump called the situation “terrible” and predicted that the same situation may play out in the U.S. if a Democratic president is elected in 2028.
“It’s terrible. Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Trump told a Fox News reporter on Friday. “If the Democrats get in, you will not live a very good life.”
Ceuta’s mayor-president, Juan Jesús Vivas, called the situation “absolutely unsustainable” and estimated some 60,000 people had entered the territory since Thursday; Spain’s interior ministry, meanwhile, put the number closer to 50,000.
However, the ministry said Friday afternoon local time that more than 25,000 individuals who crossed the border have already left.
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Still, businesses in Ceuta have closed their doors amid what residents have called a migrant “apocalypse.”
Migrants are sleeping in the streets and bathing in public fountains. Hundreds of men were loitering on the beach in Ceuta on Friday, while video shared by David Santos, director of La Bandera, shows a migrant defecating on the side of a building in broad daylight.
“You ask why everyone came — because there’s no work in Morocco,” Ajoub el-Arrot a 24-year-old Moroccan migrant told the New York Times.
“I don’t know why they let us through,” he said. “They opened the border and let everyone go by.”
Local residents told media outlets they are living in fear, afraid to leave their homes.
“People aren’t leaving their homes, only to buy food and then return. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Sebastián Antón, a supermarket employee. “They’re buying huge amounts of food to fill their pantries as if something bad were going to happen.”
Other European leaders signaled they were prepared to limit travel from Spain as the crisis unfolded.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her country was ready “to intervene with extraordinary measures to defend the borders and the safety of citizens, including the suspension of the Schengen Area with Spain,” which allows people to travel freely between the borders of 29 European countries. Finland’s interior minister Mari Rantanen suggested the rest of the EU should take a similar approach.
Meloni, meanwhile, called the images from Ceuta “shocking” and said the situation “demonstrate[s], once again, that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a real threat to the security of Europe’s borders.”
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