Return to Morocco of a group of minors on August 16, 2021, in Ceuta. Antonio Sempere (Europa Press)
New judicial setback for the central Executive and the Government of the city of Ceuta for the return of Moroccan minors in August last year.
The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) has dismissed the appeal of the Government Delegation in Ceuta and the local Government against one of the two sentences of a city court that ordered the adoption of "the necessary measures" for the return to Spain of a group of Moroccan minors, who had entered Ceuta in May 2021 and were returned to Morocco on August 15.
The Ceuta judge made the decision after concluding that “all the procedures” required by law to repatriate them were omitted.
The decision of the TSJA affects eight minors, but the resolution of the appeal of a second sentence that affects another 12 adolescents is still pending.
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The twenty Moroccan minors entered the autonomous city irregularly and in a few days in mid-May, along with another 10,000 people.
The boys were part of that uncertain number (approximately a thousand) of minors who for days were concentrated in ships or makeshift camps.
In August, and by surprise, the Ministry of the Interior, the Government Delegation and the local Executive of Ceuta coordinated an operation to return to Morocco as many minors as possible.
They did it with the collaboration of Morocco, with whom Spain has an agreement for this purpose, but without following any of the steps that the immigration law and international conventions establish for this type of procedure: there was no individual hearing with the minors, nor family reports of each,
and it was also not possible to follow up on the situation of the returned children.
This has been verified by various judicial decisions after the complaints of various NGOs such as Coordinator of Neighborhoods, Fundación Raíces, Elin or Andalucía Acoge.
The Public Prosecutor's Office of the National Court came to consider the administrative actions that were carried out in August to repatriate the Moroccan minors who entered Ceuta "null and void".
The TSJA rejects the "exceptional situation" alleged by the Government Delegation and the city of Ceuta to justify their action.
The court underlines: "The sudden, massive and illegal nature of the entry into Ceuta in the spring of last year of thousands of citizens of the Kingdom of Morocco in no way authorized the Kingdom of Spain to excuse its submission to the rule of law."
And he insists on the absence of procedure: "The Government Delegation in Ceuta, in addition to not individualizing the return files for each affected minor, omitted all the essential procedures and procedural precautions that must be complied with for repatriation," he maintains.
The plan allowed the return of 55 Moroccan minors until the Contentious-Administrative Court 1 of Ceuta ordered a precautionary halt to the repatriations.
In February 2022, the same court declared that the repatriations of these minors had been carried out without legal protection and that they had violated the boys' right to physical and moral integrity.
The resolution stated: “The action of the Administration, exempt from the minimum required procedural guarantees, averted an objective situation of risk relevant to the physical or moral integrity of the MENAs [unaccompanied foreign minors] affected by the return measures.”
And in two different sentences he requested the return of those returned.
It is these sentences, appealed both by the Government Delegation and by the local Government, that the TSJA should study.
In its first decision on one of them, the Court confirms the deficiencies of the procedure and dismisses the Administration's appeal against the return of the minors.
This ruling is still appealable before the Supreme Court.
The Government delegate in Ceuta, Salvadora Mateos, and the vice president of the city, Mabel Deu, have another case open in the Ceuta Prosecutor's Office for alleged continued prevarication in this process.