Investigative journalists from Westmonster interviewed a Spanish police officer who claimed that the Spanish Maritime Search and Rescue agency, Salvamento Marítimo, ferries migrants from Morocco to to the EU.
“They aren’t taking the people from the middle of the sea – they are going to Moroccan waters because the migrants take their phones and [give] the coordinates to the Tarifan [Spanish] traffickers, then Tarifan traffickers call to the people of Salvamento Maritimo and they go over there to the Moroccan seas,” the officer explained.
According to the officer, the Spanish government is doing “nothing” to prevent this alleged activity by their agency. “Nothing . . . The people of Frontex [EU Border and Coast Guard Agency] knew that this summer would be a very bad summer with migrants, and they didn’t do anything.”
The serving officer believes that no more than 10 to 20 percent of arriving migrants are women or children, and that the rest are men. Similar numbers were noted when the NGO vessel Aquarius unloaded 630 migrants in Valencia, Spain, in June, 450 of whom were reportedly able-bodied males.
“It’s a bad future – for us and for them, because we can’t help them because there are a lot of people there and we have a lot of problems here,” the officer said. “Spanish people are very kind. We know we have to help the people, but we can’t because the [last] crisis left us very bad.”
On Thursday the Spanish parliament passed a vote to open access to healthcare for illegal migrants “under the same conditions as people who have Spanish nationality”.
Health Minister Carmen Monton recently announced there were at least 10 000 unaccompanied migrant minors on Spanish soil, and the International Organization for Migration estimated that some 28 000 migrants arrived in Spain via the Mediterranean through the first eight months of 2018.
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