The Spanish Government has already relocated 375 underage immigrants who arrived in the Canary Islands by rafts and canoes to other autonomous communities and has authorized the transfer of another 468, of which 195 must travel in a matter of days to their new reception centers on the mainland.
The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, explained at a press conference that last Friday the Supreme Court was formally notified that the Government has complied with its order to take in 907 asylum-seeking children and adolescents, as per the precautionary measure requested by the Canary Islands.
Torres has taken advantage of this milestone to take stock of how the mandate derived from the reform of the Immigration Law is progressing in decongesting the network of minors in the Canary Islands, which at one point housed almost 6,000 African children and adolescentsThe former Canary Islands president, who coordinates the Interministerial Commission on Migration, recalled that 2,826 minors must leave the islands for other regions so that their reception system can be reduced to the ratios that the new national legislation assigns to each community based on its population, GDP, and other factors.
This relocation process has already begun through three channels: the conventional one, which allows four months to rehouse the children who were already in the Canary Islands before September; the express one, which requires finding a new destination within fifteen days for those who arrived after the migratory contingency was declared (August 29); and the process opened by the Supreme Court for asylum seekers.
Regarding the latter, Torres has detailed that 607 of the 907 minors who had requested asylum are now in centers within the state network for international protection, while another 300 candidates have been rejected, either because they had ties to the Canary Islands, or because they were actually adults or young people who had turned 18 while their cases were being processed.Of the 607 minors that the State has taken in under its international protection network, 334 have already been relocated to centers on the mainland and 273 remain in transit centers in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria awaiting placement: 200 in the former Canarias 50 barracks, 16 in the Casa del Mar, and 57 in the León SchoolRegarding the minors who have arrived in the archipelago since September, Torres has specified that 236 transfer resolutions have already been signed, which the law obliges the region of origin (Canary Islands in this case) to execute within five days."If only 41 have left, what happened to the other 195?" the minister asked himself, before answering that it is up to the Canary Islands government to explain, because it is the autonomous community's responsibility to take the minor to their new place of residence.Finally, he emphasized that, to date, the Canary Islands Government has only sent 437 files of minors who were already in their centers before this summer to the State so that they can be relocated through the conventional procedure of the Immigration LawIf to that figure are added the 607 transferred to the state network for international protection, it is clear that the objective of processing 2,826 minors housed in the Canary Islands within four months has been met in less than half the time."And the four months started counting a long time ago," the minister emphasized, urging the Canary Islands government to expedite these types of files in order to carry out the transfers on time.
