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PM Sanchez vows to 'restore order'Associated Press reveals some details about the current influx and the lax state of controls at the border:
"The priority is to guarantee border control on the border with Morocco and provide Ceuta and Melilla with the necessary means to solve the crisis," Sanchez stated.
"This sudden arrival of irregular migrants represents a serious crisis for Spain and Europe. I want to assure Spaniards and those who live in Ceuta and Melilla that we are going to restore order in the city and on its borders with maximum speed."
Sanchez also pledged to visit both enclaves, located some 300 kilometers apart on the Moroccan coast, later in the day, in order to "show the determination with which the government of Spain is acting."
At least one person died during the mass border breach, according to Spanish authorities.
For years, both Ceuta and Melilla have been particular hotspots for migrants seeking to flee Africa and enter Europe. The illegal migrants frequently try to get in by scaling the border fence and trying to catch a ride via passing traffic, or attempting to reach Spanish soil by sea.
The enclave of Melilla saw a minor border breach as well, Spanish media reported on Tuesday, with some 85 people climbing over its border fence.
Amina Farkani, a 31-year-old Moroccan woman who commuted to jobs in Ceuta for 18 years until foreign workers were banned from entering when coronavirus outbreaks began to surge last year, said she saw an opportunity to go back to work when she heard that police were not controlling the border.See also:
"They let people pass and stand there without speaking," Farkani told The Associated Press. "People just pass and pass and pass."
Farkani was among the thousands of migrants who were sent back to Morocco. AP reporters saw Spanish military personnel and police officers ushering both adults and children through a gate in the border fence. Some tried to resist and were pushed and chased by soldiers who used batons to hasten them.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska denied that unaccompanied migrants under 18, who are allowed to remain legally under the tutelage of Spanish authorities, were being deported.
A senior Moroccan Foreign Ministry official said the government had recalled its ambassador to Spain for consultations. The official wasn't authorized to be identified by name in media reports.
By Tuesday afternoon, nearly 8,000 sea-soaked people had crossed the border into the city since early Monday, the Spanish government said, including some 2,000 thought to be teenagers. The number getting in slowed after Spain deployed additional police officers and soldiers, but the arrivals didn't stop even when anti-riot police on the Moroccan side dispersed crowds of people hoping to cross over.
At least 4,000 were returned to Morocco, according to Spain's Interior Ministry. Morocco and Spain signed an agreement three decades ago to expel all those who swim across the border.
Yet many arriving Tuesday were sub-Saharan Africans who often migrate to flee poverty or violence at home. Spain has agreements to return some of those migrants to their native countries, but not all of them.
Neither the government in Rabat nor local officials have commented about the mass influx or responded to queries by The Associated Press.
"The army is at the border in a deterrent role, but there are great quantities of people on the Moroccan side waiting to enter," he told Cadena SER radio.
Four Spanish armored vehicles parked Tuesday at Tarajal beach in Ceuta, where the border fence leads to a short breakwater. Some people also rushed up the hills surrounding the city and jumped over the fences.
In a video shared by a Spanish police union urging authorities to send in reinforcements, anti-riot officers behind the border fence were using shields to protect themselves from stones being thrown by people in Morocco.
The European Union's top migration official - Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson - described the incidents as "worrying" and called on Morocco to prevent people from setting out in the first place.
Clearly they need to do something about it, asking politely isn't going to change things.
Vivas, Ceuta's conservative regional president, said residents were in a state of "anguish, concern and fear" and 60% of the city's children had not shown up for school on Tuesday.
Many African migrants regard Ceuta and nearby Melilla, another Spanish territory, as a gateway into Europe. In 2020, 2,228 chose to cross into the two enclaves by sea or land, often risking injuries or death.

"Whenever pathocracy emerges in an autonomous process, this means that the religious systems dominating that country were unable to prevent it in time. As a rule, the religious organizations of any given country have sufficient influence upon society to be able to oppose nascent evil if they act with courage and reason. If they cannot, this is the result of either fragmentation and strife among various denominations or of internal corruption within the religious system. As a result, religious organizations have long tolerated and even uncritically inspired the development of pathocracy. This weakness later becomes the cause of religion's disasters." -Andrew Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

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