The Ministry of the Interior is working on preparations for the freight of “a series” of return flights of migrants to Senegal, police sources confirm to EL PERIÓDICO. The first of these flights is scheduled to depart “before the month ends”these same sources assure.
They are likely to be part of this contingent of migrants from the more than 1,200 and 3,000 who arrived at various points of the Canary Islands in July and August respectively, but also from the last ones who have arrived on the island of El Hierro, all of them during the actual wave of canoes.
90% of the migrants who arrived in the Canary Islands in this crisis – in total there are more than 14,000 so far this year – are of Senegalese nationality. The first return flight for these migrants will leave to Dakar from a Canarian airport and not a peninsular one, indicate the sources consulted. Although they clarify that it will depart from Tenerife or Gran Canaria – and that point has yet to be decided -, they have not yet finalized the number of travelers – “more than a hundred” – in that first return package.
They do confirm that the trip is already being planned “in accordance with the “usual safety device”, so the plane will not be just full of foreigners. On migrant return flights, 30% of the ticket is police provision: one agent from the Police Intervention Units (UIP) travels for every two foreigners who arrive in an irregular situation and are not accepted by Spain.
More flights
The one planned for this month of October It won’t be the only flight. A succession of air freights to return migrants will take place throughout the autumn months, with the confirmed involvement of the affected police units.
The migration crisis that the Canary Islands are experiencing is caused by the calms in the Atlantic – on the most dangerous route to access European territory – and driven by the situation of political instability, poverty and violence in Senegal. It also has an impact on the departure of canoes from the coasts of Mauritania, its neighbor to the north. With both countries, among others, Spain has migrant return agreements Not allowed. All those who have arrived irregularly in Spain and are not proven to have a particularly vulnerable situation – children, the elderly, the sick… – or any reason for granting asylum or refuge are eligible for return.
It was by virtue of these return agreements that a Civil Guard patrol boat deployed by the Interior in Africa was able disembark 168 migrants in Senegal on August 29 which he had rescued from a canoe 80 nautical miles off the Mauritanian coast. Nouakchott refused to receive them, and it was Senegal, the country from which they had sailed, that accepted their return.
Migrants affected by return agreements of the Spanish authorities will be boarded on the flights that are being prepared in less than 48 hours after the adoption of each agreementsince jurisprudence detracts from the validity of returns that are organized after that period.
11,000 intercepted departures
Return pacts with African countries began to be considered in 2006 by the Zapatero government, after the first major crisis of the cayucos, which brought 30,000 migrants to the Canary Islands. Currently, In the last nine days the Canary Islands have received 4,531 migrantsat a pace not known since that wave of 2006.
The contacts of the Ministry of the Interior with the Senegalese authorities have intensified these days, according to ministerial sources, despite the unpredictability that affects their government at the moment.
Related news
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, recalled this Monday from Brussels that he has already traveled four times to Mauritania and twice to Senegal, and that the Government’s preventive action in those two countries “has prevented 40% of irregular departures to the Canary Islands.” The minister estimates that there are 11,000 migrants who have been prevented from entering the Atlantic this year in search of the islands.
Regarding the police efforts that are currently being carried out -mainly on the island of Tenerife- to identify and evaluate adults arrived in the current wave, Marlaska has indicated that “measures are taken to guarantee the rights of migrants and also do serious work in parameters of humanity and security.”