Issued a command of Immigration in Irun for offering days off to its police for each immigrant arrested

Young migrants on the streets of Irún (Gipuzkoa), in July 2021.EDP

The Ministry of the Interior will open disciplinary proceedings against the chief inspector at the head of the Aliens and Borders Brigade of the National Police in Irún (Gipuzkoa), which on Tuesday issued an internal order in which it offered its subordinates days off depending on the number of migrants they detained on weekends, according to sources from the General Directorate of the Police. The instruction stated that, as of July 1, agents on duty on Saturday and Sunday who did not make any arrests would have the ordinary two days of release. This would change if they made an arrest, as they would increase the days off to three. From there, they would increase: those who made two or more arrests, four days of rest; and from 10 arrests, they would be entitled to five. The Superior Police Headquarters in the Basque Country annulled the order shortly after it was known, according to El Diario Vasco. Although the Ertzaintza is an integral police force in Euskadi, the powers of immigration remain exclusively with the National Police.

The three-page instruction, to which EL PAÍS has had access, is signed by the chief inspector at the head of the local Immigration Brigade under the title "Incidents", a term used in the police field to determine which agents enter service on weekends and holidays. Thus, after detailing the names of the police officers who will be on duty on Saturdays and Sundays of the third quarter, the police command includes in a section called "rules for the establishment and execution of incident days" the distribution of "compensation days" depending on the arrests made by the agents on those days. The note added that these deliveries should be enjoyed preferably the following week and never later than 45 days after they were generated.

The document was denounced on Tuesday on social networks by the Police Justice union (Jupol, the one with the largest representation among the agents), who criticized on Twitter that with these instructions "it is being 'pushed' to increase the number of detainees" in Immigration. Other organizations, such as the Unified Police Union (SUP), have also charged against the internal order, which they have called "barbaric" and which they attribute to a specific person. This organization has also regretted that it damages the image of the National Police in the Basque Country. Irungo Harrera Sarea (Irún Support Network, a volunteer organization created in 2018 to welcome immigrants who arrive in the city to try to cross the border) has shown on Wednesday its "astonishment and great concern" about the decision of the command to "reward police for hunting migrants".

Facade of the Irún police station.

Irún and the area near the Bidasoa River, due to its border situation with France, is a transit zone for irregular immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa who try to reach the neighboring country and then, in many cases, go to other EU States. Although this area belongs to the Schengen area, which allows the free movement of citizens between the signatory countries of the treaty, in recent years the Government of Emmanuel Macron has restricted the entry into its territory of undocumented foreigners and made hot returns common. All this has caused migrants to try to circumvent the controls by crossing the border on the train tracks or swimming by the river. Nine people have died, six drowned and three hit by a train, in the attempt since 2021.

This situation has led to the emergence of mafias that take advantage of migrants. Last March, a court in Baiona (France) sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 40,000 euros to a 31-year-old Cameroonian citizen, arrested in December 2021 in Gipuzkoa, for having charged 247 migrants whom he helped cross the border. The convict charged each of them 150 euros to pass them to France aboard trucks.

At the #Irún Police Station it rains on wet.

What happens in those dependencies?

Because both @info_dgp and @interiorgob put themselves in profile and do not act.

Police officers are workers, they are people who deserve to be treated as such#JUPOLContigo #EquiparacionYa https://t.co/rKLkuuez4e

— JUPOL (@JupolNacional) June 6, 2023

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Read more

I'm already a subscriber