The Canary Islands Vice President denies abandonment and says they will abide by the Prosecutor's Office's instructions

The vice president of the Canary Islands Government, Manuel Domínguez (PP), has denied this Saturday that unaccompanied migrant minors are or will be in a situation of abandonment, and has guaranteed that the regional Executive will abide by the instructions of the Prosecutor's Office.

All this in connection with the decree announced this Friday by the Superior Prosecutor's Office of the Canary Islands, in which it warns that it will identify those "people from the General Directorate of Child Protection of the Canary Islands Government" who are protected in order not to welcome children arriving by boat in their centers in the new protocol approved by the autonomous community and will investigate whether they have committed a crime of child abandonment or other type.

In statements to the media before presiding over a meeting of the regional executive board of the PP, accompanied by the national deputy secretary of Organization of the party, Carmen Fúnez, Domínguez emphasized that what the Canary Islands Executive intends with the new protocol is "to comply with the law".

That is, "to stop doing things as they have been doing until now" and that migrant minors are handed over by the Police, not to NGOs, but to an official of the autonomous community and "individually, with photograph, fingerprint, name, identification, and that we know exactly where that minor is going to go".

On this last point, the Canary Islands vice president pointed out that "the Prosecutor's Office will be able to tell us where we have to take these unaccompanied minors and we are fully available to continue taking care of these children, I don't know if as they deserve, but what we will never do is abandon them".

"Where do we send them? To centers that are saturated? If the Prosecutor's Office tells us that we have to send them there, we will never hesitate to do so. Because we don't have more reception centers," Manuel Domínguez reflected.

"Are they better cared for where they are currently or in the centers to which they are diverted? That is where we will have to agree in order to provide the service, the guardianship, the care, the pampering, that these boys and girls who come to our land need," he added.

Regarding the possible visit of Pope Francis to the Canary Islands, Domínguez recalled that the visit he made to the Vatican months ago together with the president of the autonomous community, Fernando Clavijo (Canarian Coalition) was precisely for this purpose.

The idea, Domínguez elaborated, is to obtain an "image" with which to "show the world what the precarious situation we are experiencing" in the archipelago is; "to Europe the help we need" and to the Government of Spain "the urgency and the emergency we are suffering".

If the Pope finally visits the Canary Islands "we will receive him with open arms, it would be magnificent news" and would allow "to carry out an action that Italy did in a different, but effective way, with Lampedusa," he asserted.