The Ministry of the Interior will activate the Foreigners Internment Center (CIE) of El Matorral, on the island of Fuerteventura, in response to the increase in the arrival of boats in the Canary Islands in recent months.
This is one of the decisions adopted during the monographic technical meeting in which exclusively personnel from the Ministry participated and which was chaired by the minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska. The meeting was also attended by the Secretary of State for Security, the General Commissioner for Immigration and Borders, and the General of the Civil Guard Zone in the Canary Islands.
According to the Government of the Canary Islands, Grande-Marlaska has conveyed to the regional president, Ángel Víctor Torres, the first agreements adopted against the increase in irregular migration in the islands.
Among them is the improvement of personal and material resources in the countries of origin of irregular migrants (Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia), with the aim of stopping their departure in boats and canoes. Similarly, migration policies will be improved, streamlining the administrative procedures so that people who have arrived in Spain irregularly can be returned as soon as possible.
Finally, the minister, pending confirmation in the post, has confirmed to Torres his willingness to visit the islands to check how the work is being coordinated in the archipelago.
In 2019, 2,698 people arrived in the Canary Islands in canoes and boats. That is more than 1,000 migrants than the previous year, although the increase was more pronounced in percentage terms in 2018, when 1,308 people reached the Canary coasts, three times more than the previous year (in 2017 there were just over 400).
