Unaccompanied Moroccan Minors Flee Ceuta Centers to Avoid Repatriation

Moroccan minors prefer to become homeless in Ceuta than to return to Morocco. Dreading their repatriation, they are fleeing from accommodation centers like the one in Santa Amelia to return to the streets. Since the start of the operation, 55 minors under the age of 16 from this center, which housed 234, have already been repatriated. But only 43 are still staying there, the rest having escaped and wandering the streets again, reports Ceuta al dia.

To read: Dozens of Moroccan Migrant Minors Flee Ceuta Center to Avoid Repatriation

Abdallah, around 15 years old, is one of those who managed to escape on Saturday from the Santa Amelia sports center. He now sleeps on the street and begs, alongside Zacharias and Hamza, two other 16-year-old minors. All three are from Fnideq, the same source specifies. Another minor, Yahya, also 16 years old and from Tetouan where he lived with his family before arriving in Ceuta in May, has also been wandering the streets since Saturday when he escaped from the center where "the rooms are very dirty, there are no clothes, there are no blankets, there is nothing and they only let us out into the street once a week".

To read: UN Condemns Morocco’s Deportation of Unaccompanied Minors as Violation of International Law

Like these minors, many others now sleep on the street, usually not far from the port of Ceuta. About ten of them, all from Tetouan, have been hiding since Saturday in the port area near the breakwater borders, fleeing the police. Some of them are bare-chested because they claim to have fled with only what they were wearing. Oussama, 7 years old, the youngest of the group, is wearing a shirt but no shoes. "We need clothes and food," says Omar, 17, the oldest. Despite the ordeal, they do not intend to return to the centers, let alone to Morocco.