Morocco’s Crackdown Slashes Migrant Arrivals to Malaga Coast

Over the past four years, the number of migrants arriving by rickety boats on the Malaga coast has seen a sharp decline. This is due to the measures taken by the Moroccan government to limit clandestine immigration through the strait, the shortest and least dangerous route for immigration candidates. Increasingly, migrants are coming from sub-Saharan Africa and Algeria destined for the Canary Islands or Almeria, reports Malaga Hoy. For an association official, "Morocco opens and closes the taps of irregular immigration".

Some analyze Morocco’s new migration policy as a quid pro quo with Spain after its change of position on the Sahara. In any case, the drop in migratory flow is significant. The data provided by the sub-delegation of the government attests to this. From 5,630 in 2018, the number of migrants arriving in Malaga fell to 2,150 in 2019, then to 941 in 2020 and to 231 in 2021. This year, only 69 have arrived on the Malaga coast.

In 2018 and 2019, the situation was dramatic. The courts of sports centers were transformed into migrant reception centers by the Red Cross. Lawyers, police and human rights NGOs denounced these degrading reception conditions for migrants. Following these denunciations, a humanitarian base was set up by the Red Cross in the port area to take care of the migrants as soon as they arrived, before transferring them to the new Temporary Attention Center for Foreigners (CATE) for the procedures related to documentation.

Then the migrants are transported to the Emergency Accommodation and Guidance Center (CAED) which has a capacity of 220 people. The sub-delegate of the government, Javier Salas, stressed that the central government "is sensitive to the migration issue", recalling that Malaga is the gateway to Europe. "It is therefore an issue that must be addressed at the European level, to avoid once and for all the loss of human life of these migrants in search of a better future," he points out.