The first ten minor applicants for international protection who have been transferred from the Canary Islands to the peninsula have been in Gijón since that morning, sources from the Asturian Government have informed Efe.
These are nine Malians and one Senegalese, all of them over 16 years old, who have been welcomed in the facilities that the NGO Accem has in this Asturian city, who have arrived accompanied by several educators.
The same sources have indicated that, although the guardianship remains with the Canary Islands Government, the transfer has been carried out in a coordinated and communicated manner by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and the Department of Social Rights and Welfare of the Principality.
The Asturian councilor, Marta del Arco, has stressed that they have refugee status and that therefore it is the Ministry of Inclusion that manages the transfers as they are subject to the international protection program, but that these minors will continue to be under the guardianship of the Canary Islands and welcomed by Accem, which has collaboration agreements signed.
From the Gijón City Council, which governs Foro Asturias in coalition with the PP, they have assured that they "are unaware of the operation" and that they were not directly informed of the arrival of this first group of minors.
However, the second deputy mayor and spokesperson for the municipal government, Jesús Martínez Salvador, has assured that "the City Council, with all its services, will be there to collaborate in whatever is necessary" and that he had little more to say for the moment, but that it is always better to have information than not to have it.
The deputy mayor and spokesperson for the PP of Gijón, Ángela Pumariega, has been more critical, describing it as "inadmissible" that the City Council was not informed of the arrival of this group of minors either by the central government or by the one presided over by Adrián Barbón in Asturias.
"It is the height of institutional disloyalty," said the deputy mayor of Gijón, for whom this way of acting "shows, once again, the complete chaos into which the national immigration policy has turned."
In her opinion, minors are being distributed "without a clear integration plan and without an equitable distribution among all the autonomous communities", since there is "a deliberate exclusion of communities such as Catalonia or the Basque Country, so as not to upset Pedro Sánchez's independentist partners".
With the transfer of this first group of young people, the Executive is making progress in complying with the order of the Supreme Court for the State to take charge, with its resources, of these asylum seekers.
On March 25, the high court ordered the Government to take charge of around 1,000 unaccompanied migrant minors who had applied for asylum in the islands, in response to precautionary measures requested by the Canary Islands.
The majority of minor asylum seekers who have entered this process have a "highly vulnerable" profile and many of them have fled wars alone. Almost 90% are Malians and among them there are girls and adolescents, according to ministerial sources.
The central government and the Canary Islands government hold an inter-administrative meeting every Tuesday to work on the transfer of these minor asylum seekers and the plan is that from this first referral there will be two weekly transfers of between 15 and 20 young people.
The intention is to prioritize the use of small resources in the first instance and that as the weeks progress, more resources will be put on the table.
The integrity, well-being and best interests of each minor must always prevail in the process, which implies an individual study of each case to decide the final destination.
The Government asks for respect
For her part, the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, has asked for respect for the minor applicants after a "Nazi" banner in Gijón that called for their expulsion was removed in less than 24 hours.
In statements to journalists, the minister stressed that her ministry's decision is not to publicly disclose the destination of the children applying for asylum who, in compliance with a decision of the Supreme Court, are being referred to state reception resources, in order to "prevent the persecution they are fleeing from being reproduced" in Spain.
However, despite this decision, it has become public that the first ten minors transferred have been relocated to Gijón, from where, according to ministerial sources, this banner had to be removed.
In view of this fact, the minister has asked not to focus on the children who will be relocated to state-owned centers, in compliance with the order of the Supreme Court, and has asked for collaboration from all administrations, without exception, when asked if the reception of these minors will also be referred to state resources in Madrid.
