Marlaska aspires to achieve joint patrols with Morocco
The Minister of the Interior, in the photo together with Ángel Víctor Torres, visited the archipelago last year. /
The Government will propose this Friday a collaboration similar to the one it already maintains with Senegal and Mauritania to curb immigration
The State is aware that to deal with the migratory phenomenon it needs the collaboration of Rabat and in this context it will sit down to negotiate this Friday at the first meeting of the Spanish-Moroccan bilateral commission.
The proposal that the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, will put on the table will be to establish a collaboration agreement to start joint patrols that can intercept the departure of canoes.
An agreement that the Civil Guard has already maintained with Senegal since 2006 and with Mauritania, where ground patrols have also been added since 2014.
Despite the fact that at some peak moments during the last decade the Moroccan maritime authorities have provided assistance in a timely manner,
the recent tension between Spain and the Alauira country prevented reaching agreements. Now the Government hopes that the reinforcement of cooperation will serve as a dissuasive action to curb the data of the phenomenon.
The Canary Islands are not expected to be represented at the event, but they are at the water delimitation
Government security experts endorse this strategy from the point of view of a border control policy. To understand the dimensions that could be achieved, it is enough to take as a reference the balance offered in February by the general director of the Civil Guard, María Gámez.
He detailed that the
35 agents deployed in Mauritania During the past year, they carried out more than 300 maritime patrols, 400 mixed land patrols, 138 helicopter patrols and 70 days of deployment of a plane in operations to control illegal immigration to the islands.
On the other hand, so far this year the arrival of immigrants has multiplied by 29% throughout the Spanish territory, according to the latest Interior balance. A number that also
increases up to 60% if the flows of the Canarian Route are observed, which has not only become the main gateway to Europe for Africans but also the deadliest.
critics
Critical voices continue to be raised from the opposition due to the fear that the archipelago will be forgotten during the meeting in the face of other issues such as
reopening of the borders in Ceuta and Melillawhich had paralyzed Operation Crossing the Strait (OPE), maritime connections and the High Level Meeting.
Specifically, the Canarian Coalition has disfigured the Canarian president for being a "mere spectator" of an appointment in which he will not be present, while the PP, for its part, asks for "concrete measures."
The popular senator Sergio Ramos also raised his voice to the Minister of the Interior for "another unacceptable chapter" of the migratory drama. He has requested the urgent appearance of Marlaska to report on
what action protocols have failed after
the escape this weekend of twenty inmates from the Barranco Seco CIEin Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as how many police officers guard it.
An episode that, in addition, occurs after a hunger strike due to the allegedly poor conditions in which they were being treated and that has resulted, for the moment, in the arrest of only half of the escapees.
