Ibrahim, a boy from Gambia who arrived in the Canary Islands in a canoe last August, has been here for more than a week without having a permanent place to sleep.
The young man was taken on February 12 from the juvenile center where he was - an NGO had arranged for him to be sheltered there temporarily - as soon as the Prosecutor's Office decreed that he was of legal age.
Ibrahim, who asks that his identity not be revealed, is for the Spanish authorities an adult, despite the fact that he claims that he is 14 years old and provides to prove it a passport, a birth certificate, a certificate of authenticity from his embassy and a police report that sees no evidence of falsification.
Faced with the risk of him ending up on the streets, Fundación Raíces took his case to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which, without going into the substance of the matter, issued a ruling on the 14th asking the Spanish authorities to readmit him. Ibrahim in a juvenile center while the case was resolved.
Eight days later, neither the Prosecutor's Office nor the Community of Madrid have made any move and the boy continues to sleep in a space for homeless people where he is only allowed to go at dusk and where he does not know how long he will be able to stay.
This Thursday the Ombudsman has asked both institutions to carry out the “necessary steps” to comply with the UN's instructions.
Neither the Children's Rights Committee nor the Prosecutor's Office nor the Community of Madrid have responded to EL PAÍS' questions.
Ibrahim's case reflects the situation that dozens of young people from Gambia are experiencing in Spain.
Given the alleged passport fraud of citizens of that nationality, who supposedly falsify their age in order to be accepted as minors, the police have activated all their radars and are suspicious of any document that comes from that country.
The Scientific Police has prepared a technical report listing the reasons to question the veracity of the data contained in Gambian passports.
The document, to which EL PAÍS had access, highlights that in the African country two passports coexist: one that contains biometric data and is more reliable and another, older, which not only does not contain the fingerprints of the interested party but can be issued through a representative or a family member.
The Gambian embassy has certified the veracity of the documents of several of these boys, including Ibrahim, but that is not enough for agents and prosecutors to believe them.
The result is that the juvenile prosecutor's offices are declaring the age of majority and removing them from juvenile centers, even though the boys (and the lawyers who represent them) insist that they are under 18 years old.
The difference between being considered a minor or an adult is enormous, because minors, by law, must be welcomed by the administration and cannot be expelled.
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The Spanish Administration distrusts the passports of Gambian minors
“If you want to question the validity of an official passport issued by a country that Spain recognizes as a sovereign State, the only way to do so is to individually challenge those documents that show signs of falsity,” explains a jurist familiar with these. cases.
This is also ruled by the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2020: “The accreditation value of the minor that results from the official documentation issued by the competent authorities of the countries of origin must prevail over the doubts raised in the Prosecutor's Office about the reliability of the age that appears in official documentation that has not been invalidated or discredited by the authorities that issued it and that does not show signs of manipulation."
Ibrahim was treated like an adult since he landed in the Canary Islands, and went through reception centers in Granada and Barcelona until he ended up in Madrid and was left on the street.
His case came into the hands of Fundación Raíces, which managed to get him admitted to a juvenile center, but weeks later the Prosecutor's Office summoned him to submit him to the age determination procedure.
By then, Ibrahim already had his original passport with him because he had applied for it in Gambia before getting on a canoe.
His lawyer then refused to undergo forensic tests that were highly questioned due to his reliability and that all the competent authorities have proposed to change.
Given the boy's refusal, the prosecutor asked the police for an expert report on the document and, although they saw no signs of falsity, the public ministry ended up declaring his legal age of majority.
With the prosecutor's decree, Ibrahim had to leave the juvenile center on February 12.
There are many other cases like Ibrahim's that are coming to light in recent days and almost all of them follow that pattern in which the suspicion of the authorities is directly applied.
The police continue to believe that fraud is the majority and continue to look for ways to prevent supposed adults from posing as minors who must be taken in and who cannot be expelled.
The last case, revealed by EL PAÍS this Thursday, arose in Lleida four months ago.
The Immigration Brigade had detected an increase in cases of young people who had remained under the care of Generalitat centers, at the expense of the public treasury, and who, finally, have been considered adults.
And he thought that opening an investigation into these young people for fraud could be a way to stop that trend.
Thus, the Immigration and Borders Brigade of Lleida sent a letter to the General Directorate of Children and Adolescents (DGAIA), the Generalitat body that takes in minors, to request information on how much money had been spent on the “ accommodation, maintenance, health training and legal advice” of a young Gambian who remained in shelters and who, according to a decree from the Prosecutor's Office, ended up being considered of legal age.
The objective was to prosecute him for an alleged crime of subsidy fraud, which punishes anyone who obtains “subsidies or aid” from administrations by “falsifying the required conditions,” such as age.
For the Lleida prosecutor's office, however, this line of investigation "does not make any sense."
“It is a police initiative that causes great surprise to us,” prosecutor Jorge Lucía Morlans explained to EL PAÍS.