{"id":580576,"date":"2026-08-02T17:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/580576\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T17:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:23:08","slug":"spain-pushes-last-migrants-out-of-ceuta-as-locals-suspect-us-role-in-invasion-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/580576\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain pushes last migrants out of Ceuta as locals suspect US role in \u2018invasion\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last remaining migrants were clinging on in Ceuta<\/a> on Sunday, but they knew they were not welcome.<\/p>\n

Most of the 60,000 who streamed into the Spanish enclave<\/a> in north Africa this week had returned to Morocco<\/a> the previous day. Those who stayed on mingled warily with locals on morning dog walks, but their mumbled requests for help to charge long-dead smartphones were rebuffed.<\/p>\n

A few food shops in the town had reopened \u2013 or at least opened cracks in their doors \u2013 but they turned away anyone who looked like they had swum from Morocco.<\/p>\n

There was a bit of relief for the young men on the beach: they lined up to enjoy outdoor public showers, a small symbol of the rich-world comforts they had risked their lives to obtain.<\/p>\n

Nourdine Boukherchoun was not yet ready to give up. Although the 26-year-old has a job stacking fruit in a Carrefour supermarket in Tangier, he said he wanted to escape because \u201clife is bad\u201d in his home country.<\/p>\n

He had spent a second night sleeping on the street and was nursing a bandaged wound on his leg. \u201cI\u2019m going to stay here in Spain<\/a>, Ceuta, right till the end,\u201d he said. \u201cNo more Morocco.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the thousands of migrants who streamed into the enclave on Thursday had dreams of a better life. Some were encouraged by a Spanish court ruling last month that made them think swimmers could not be sent home. Others, says the Spanish government, were manipulated by online campaigns with murky origins.<\/p>\n

The migrants say they decided to make the crossing when word spread on social media that the border was open. At least 67 people drowned.<\/p>\n

Some residents of Ceuta, whose Spanish sovereignty is disputed by Morocco, suspect Rabat orchestrated the influx to hurt its European neighbour. Migrants said that when they approached the Spanish frontier, Moroccan guards had ushered them on and in some cases had been overwhelmed by the crowds.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Spanish PM calls for urgent EU meeting after \u2018selfish\u2019 responses to Ceuta crisisOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

As Boukherchoun spoke on Saturday, two Spanish policemen shouted down the street to ask what was happening. Hearing that the Moroccan was being interviewed, one replied: \u201cOK. When you finish, send him to the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overnight, two people sustained minor injuries in stabbings by migrants. The interior ministry assured Ceuta\u2019s 83,000 residents that there had been \u201cno deaths\u201d.<\/p>\n

Aside from having no food, some migrants said they had been chased by armed groups of Ceuta residents. It was a 45-minute walk back to the Tarajal breakwater they had swum around, a journey past beaches strewn with litter other migrants had left behind.<\/p>\n

Spanish soldiers in body armour and helmets took the lead in directing hundreds of them home, some barking at them in fluent Arabic in a city where roughly 40 per cent of the population is of Arab origin. To help the migrants along, soldiers gave the occasional shove.<\/p>\n

A young Spanish woman named Marina came running up to one soldier in panic. \u201cThere are more over there,\u201d she said, pointing to three bedraggled young men trudging down the street.<\/p>\n

The young woman\u2019s mother, Gema, was watching on with friends. \u201cThey took the city. It was an invasion. There was no law and order,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen to Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her friend Isabel repeated a conspiracy theory that Trump could even be involved, given his enmity towards Spain\u2019s left-wing prime minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez and closeness to Morocco\u2019s King Mohammed VI.<\/p>\n

Doubting that Morocco was caught unawares by the mass border crossing, she said: \u201cMohammed VI has the best intelligence service in the world. It\u2019s like the Israeli one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riccardo Fabiani, north Africa director of the International Crisis Group, said the evidence pointed to \u201csome sort of Moroccan official role in this to send a message\u201d. He said it was difficult to know what the motive was, but did not discount the idea it was an attempt to curry favour with the US. <\/p>\n

American and Israeli right-wingers had in recent weeks called on Morocco to act on Ceuta to punish S\u00e1nchez for his opposition to the war in Iran, Fabiani noted. US and Israeli politicians quickly seized on the crisis to attack S\u00e1nchez\u2019s pro-immigration policies.<\/p>\n

Spain has lambasted people-trafficking mafias but gone out of its way to avoid criticising the Moroccan authorities about the Ceuta influx. Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain\u2019s interior minister, said he felt \u201cvery satisfied\u201d about Madrid\u2019s co-operation with Rabat in recent years.<\/p>\n

Asked by the Financial Times if Morocco was a danger to Ceuta\u2019s security, he said: \u201cMorocco is not a threat to either Ceuta or the rest of Spain. It\u2019s an absolutely reliable partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people of Ceuta, however, were in shock, not least because the influx was so much bigger than a similar incident in 2021 when at least 8,000 migrants crossed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in shock because they can\u2019t understand how something that\u2019s already happened could happen all over again,\u201d said Arantxa Campos, president of the Ceuta Employers\u2019 Confederation. \u201cThe moment someone crosses over, there should be a system that\u2019s organised, structured and well thought-out.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were signs, she added, that some migrants were trying to hide from the authorities in order to stay in Ceuta.<\/p>\n

On the road back to the border, a group of four men slipped away from a Spanish soldier. They headed down some steps to a beach, where they lay in the shade of a straw parasol and ignored his yells of \u201cYalla!\u201d or \u201cMove!\u201d.<\/p>\n

Others complied reluctantly, including four teenage girls in long party dresses who were being escorted by a female good Samaritan. A man shouted \u201cViva Espa\u00f1a\u201d ironically, then lifted his T-shirt to reveal a red welt across his back from a baton strike.<\/p>\n

In Fnideq, the Moroccan beach town on the other side of the border, the streets were lined with disappointed and rattled boys and men who had streamed out of Ceuta on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Moroccan police had set up checkpoints and some migrants were loaded into buses out of the city. Anxious women sat waiting on a wall, holding pictures of missing sons and brothers.<\/p>\n

Ahmed, who had just returned from Ceuta, said that like many others he had not even told his parents where he was going.<\/p>\n

Wearing black jeans he\u2019d put into a plastic bag during his swim, the 28-year-old said he had wanted to emigrate to Europe to pursue a football career for the past five years and had tried to cross three times before. But his experience in Ceuta \u201cchanged my mind completely\u201d. <\/p>\n

He said that he and the other migrants had become pawns in power games between Morocco and Spain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have political problems, they\u2019re not getting along, so they opened up the border to allow us to cross. We were exploited.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last remaining migrants were clinging on in Ceuta on Sunday, but they knew they were not welcome.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,6285,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-580576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-horizontal","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}