The calm of the sea has facilitated the arrival in Lanzarote of two thousand people in the last five days who left from the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara heading to the Canary Islands. After an October with fewer arrivals than the previous year, the increase in rescues these days highlights the shortcomings of spaces and resources, as well as the dangerousness of the route with eight deaths recorded since Friday, November 1st.
The arrivals of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands through precarious boats on the Atlantic route have continued to grow gradually in recent years, with Lanzarote and El Hierro taking center stage. However, the emergency resources, provided by the Ministries of the Interior and Social Security and Migration, are insufficient and collapse.
"Until now we had not had an arrival like the one we had this weekend. The collapse is total," highlighted the Minister of Social Welfare of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Marciano Acuña, during an interview on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero this Tuesday. "Thirty years after the first boat arrived in the Canary Islands, we can no longer play at improvisation," highlights the expert lawyer in Immigration, Loueila Mint El Mamy.
Maritime Rescue has rescued more than thirty precarious boats in five days, in addition to several rescues that have been carried out on the morning of this Tuesday. However, the regional head of First Emergency Response for the Immigrant Population in the Canary Islands Red Cross, José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, assures that they are being able to assist "all the people" who have arrived on the coasts of Lanzarote and the Canary Islands and that "currently there is no lack of materials, resources, or personnel" to assist at the foot of the dock in Puerto Naos.
The Red Cross is in charge of the affiliation of the migrants who arrive at the port, there after changing clothes and eating something, they are interviewed in a space enabled with each of the migrants to identify them, know their country of origin and determine if there are highly vulnerable profiles, such as minors, women victims of trafficking or asylum seekers. In addition, to assist migrants in the worst health conditions, the Canary Islands Health Service has mobilized health personnel, from Medicine and Nursing, to the Puerto Naos dock. In addition to the transfers to the Emergency Room of the Molina Orosa Hospital in the most serious cases.
The police custody
The emergency space enabled more than two years ago by the Interior Ministry for the police to guard and deliver the return orders to adult migrants arriving on the island, the Temporary Foreigners Assistance Center (CATE), only has capacity for 300 people. Built with tents, this center exceeded its maximum capacity this weekend and houses 400 adults, according to data provided to La Voz by the manager of the Security and Emergencies Consortium of Lanzarote, Enrique Espinosa.
The CATE of Lanzarote has already been questioned by the Ombudsman, who assured last year that the space "does not meet the necessary conditions" and urged the State to "improve the facilities and introduce substantial changes in the operating regime."
"The main problem lies in the emergency and immediacy as something exceptional when in the Canary Islands it is structural," continues the lawyer Loueila Mint El Mamy, "we are still playing at improvisation, patching, band-aiding, a structural issue. The lawyer gives the example of the CATE of Malaga, where only two boats have been received this year, but which has prepared a module for first assistance and infrastructure to "be able to do all that work well."
The lack of permanent resources on the island with the capacity to accommodate in moments where several rescues are concentrated puts at risk the legal assistance of the people who arrive on the island and makes it difficult to detect the most vulnerable cases. Loueila Mint explains that "if everything is done quickly and we are going to treat in an immediate and exceptional way something that is no longer so, we are going to find violations of the right to childhood: poorly made records, minors who claimed to be so and were resigned as adults, or investigations to detect who has been the owner of the boat without the lawyers having arrived."
This shortage of permanent spaces also pushed the Canary Islands Government to cede to the State a tent that it set up months ago in Puerto Naos with the aim of welcoming unaccompanied migrant minors who arrived by boat to the island and that aroused the rejection of the Prosecutor's Office. On the morning of this Tuesday, and before the arrival of 200 more people to the dock, the tents of the port were also at the limit of their capacity, with 250 adults and minors accumulated from the rescues of the previous day.
"The Police are collapsed, the Red Cross is collapsed and for an egalitarian issue devices were opened and bunk beds were put. It is a provisional and temporary device, its capacity depends on those that arrive, it has a margin between 50 and 250 people", revealed Acuña in the morning radio program Buenos días, Lanzarote, about the tents at the foot of the dock. In addition, the Montaña Mina reception center, in Argana, housed 300 adults this Tuesday.
Although the referrals to other islands are usually made in less than 48 hours, on days when the arrival of boats is concentrated, the procedures are delayed. Sources from the Ministry of Welfare of the Government of the Canary Islands explain to La Voz that they cannot make a total estimate of the migrant minors welcomed by the autonomous community due to delays in the records that the National Police must make due to the increase in arrivals.
"We understand that people must be rescued first, that there must be medical teams and the first assistance group of the Red Cross, but we must remember that the second most important thing is legal assistance", explains the lawyer, if there is none "there will be violations of rights, such as illegal detentions", she adds.
Meanwhile, as confirmed by the Emergency Consortium to La Voz, the unaccompanied migrant minors have been transferred to the centers of the island, which have already exceeded their capacity, and those who came with their family have been referred to Gran Canaria directly to pass the affiliation there. This type of express referral puts at risk the possibility that lawyers supervise whether or not human rights are being complied with.
