Sixteen rejected asylum seekers from five countries were handed to Morocco — a step rights groups call forced, and Madrid calls safeguarded, with the vote three weeks away.
Spain has returned more than a dozen sub-Saharan African and Asian migrants to Morocco after they reached the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and had asylum claims refused — the first deportation of its kind from the enclave since the mass border crossing in July.
The Interior Ministry said Morocco agreed to receive the group and that they remain on Moroccan territory, declining to give numbers or nationalities. Charities working in Ceuta said 16 people from Senegal, Nigeria, Yemen, Cameroon and Bangladesh were sent back.
The legal argument turns on classification. A ministry spokesperson told Reuters that Morocco is considered by the EU to be a safe country, and that returns are carried out “with all the necessary safeguards.”
Rights groups dispute the premise. “Spain, despite its (progressive) speeches in Europe, is not ensuring that human rights guarantees are met for people who cross its borders in Ceuta and Melilla,” said Amnesty International researcher Virginia Alvarez. “Morocco does not respect many human rights.” Neither Rabat’s Interior Ministry nor the International Organization for Migration responded to Reuters.
The returns sit inside a wider emergency. Roughly 80,000 people crossed from Morocco into Ceuta over 48 hours in July — Ceuta and Melilla being Europe’s only land borders with Africa.
Most went back within days, but thousands stayed; Spain is housing 8,000 migrants in reception centres and processing asylum claims lodged by the majority of those remaining. The government says more than 13,000 people have returned to Morocco voluntarily since mid-August, a figure several NGOs, including Amnesty, have challenged with the Spanish ombudsman, alleging some were forced to leave, non-Moroccans among them.
Pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is coming from Brussels, an exhausted local population, and from the elections on 29 November.
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