Ceuta: the culmination of racist and securitised migration policies

Between 30 and 31 July, between 40,000 people (according to Morocco) and 70,000 (according to Spain) are reported to have crossed the border from Morocco into Ceuta—primarily by sea—thereby reclaiming their freedom of movement. Ceuta, a European colonial remnant under Spanish control, is located on Moroccan territory. Between 83 people (official figures) [1] and 140 [2] (according to civil society organisations) reportedly lost their lives in the process. Nearly all those who reached the enclave were returned to Morocco within 48 hours, in violation of international law (the principle of non-refoulement), European law (the European Pact on Asylum and Migration), and Spanish law (the ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court of 8 July 2026).

The fabrication of the “migration crisis”: a recurring strategy in European politics
Faced with what has once again been portrayed as a "migration crisis", it is important to put these figures into perspective. The number of arrivals in the enclave appears significant when viewed in relation to Ceuta’s tiny territory of just 20 km² and its population of approximately 85,000 inhabitants. Yet these figures are in fact negligible when compared with the more than 450 million people living across the 27 Member States of the European Union. What we are witnessing is essentially a magnification effect, further amplified by the fact that Ceuta, one of the only two land borders between Morocco and Spain (the other being Melilla), is located on the African continent, and does not form part of the Schengen Area.

Whenever Europe has experienced large-scale arrivals on island or landlocked territories, the rhetoric of the ‘migration crisis’ has been invariably employed. This phrase serves to shift the blame onto migrants and divert attention from the political issues and the system imposed by the former colonial powers. This tactic has been used regularly, in Lampedusa (Italy) in 2011 during the Arab Spring and in 2023 when between 6,000 and 13,000 people arrived on the island in the space of a few days, in Ceuta in 2021, when around 10,000 people entered the enclave in two days following a relaxation of Moroccan border controls; and in Melilla in 2005 and 2022 during attempts to scale the border fence.
On each of these occasions, people seeking protection or opportunities - and forced to take alternative routes due to border closures and visa requirements - were met with violent repression by law enforcement authorities before being summarily returned in violation of their fundamental rights. Moreover, many of them have lost their lives in the Mediterranean, leaving entire families in mourning.
The same brutal crackdown was carried out in Ceuta after 30 July. In response to this migratory movement, Spain’s stance has been to condemn "a violation of [its] territorial integrity by criminal networks", accusing "mafias" of manipulating events by spreading misleading information on social media—notably through an "overly broad interpretation" of the Spanish Supreme Court’s ruling of 8 July 2026, [3] or false claims that the Moroccan–Spanish border had been opened. Spain immediately deployed the army to reinforce the Guardia Civil, while the European Union offered the support of the Frontex agency to help "regain control" of Europe’s supposedly "threatened" external borders.

All-out political capitalisation
The political exploitation of the events was immediate across Europe. Images of people on the move arriving in Ceuta, broadcast continuously by the media, were rapidly seized upon by conservative and far-right political actors across EU—and even beyond Schengen area—to construct a narrative of "invasion". Framed as a public security issue, these arrivals fuelled increasingly uninhibited hate speech and outraged outcries, triggering a diplomatic crisis that quickly overshadowed the unfolding humanitarian emergency.
The Spanish government’s alleged "laxity" was singled out in particular because of the special regularisation process introduced within its territory between April and June 2026. [4] Yet that programme was subject to strict eligibility requirements—in particular, that of having arrived in Spain before 1 January 2026— and has been closed since 30 June 2026.

Nevertheless, Spain was accused of sending "the wrong message" to third-country nationals and of creating a so-called "pull factor"—a widely discredited myth that continues to be promoted by the far right. [5] Curiously, the same criticism was not levelled at Italy a year earlier when, faced with labour shortages, it adopted its own decree providing for the regularisation of 500,000 foreign nationals between 2025 and 2028. [6] The reaction to the events in Ceuta clearly reflects an effort to isolate and discredit Spain’s migration policy— one of the few European countries whose practices and statements at national level run counter to the exclusively security-focused rhetoric and policies on migration —and to counter, as quickly as possible, the potential spread of a positive and inclusive narrative on migration in the face of anti-immigration rhetoric that is gaining ground at European level. Yet this should not obscure Spain’s parallel policy of migration externalisation in West Africa over recent years, which is far from seeking to attract migrants: the construction of offshore detention centres, the deployment of the Spanish National Police and Guardia Civil abroad, and the allocation of millions of euros to West African security forces for migration control. These externalisation policies have notably contributed to making the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands one of the deadliest migration routes in recent years (with 1,300 deaths by mid-2026 [7]).

Across EU, neighbouring Member States were quick to call for stronger controls at the Union’s external borders. Some governments—notably Italy and Denmark—even called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen Area, arguing that it was failing to embrace a fully securitised approach to migration management and was not adequately controlling its borders. Such a suspension is, first, not provided for under the current EU legal framework. Second, it is well established that the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla are subject to a special derogatory regime within the Schengen framework that does not allow free movement to mainland Spain, owing to the dual system of entry and exit controls that effectively turns the enclaves into closed buffer zones. Meanwhile, Spain’s European neighbours also announced that they would reinforce controls at the Union’s internal borders—even though eight Member States, including France and Italy, have in practice maintained full or partial internal border controls since 2015. [8]
Morocco, which had celebrated the twenty-seventh anniversary of King Mohammed VI’s accession to the throne on 30 July, remained silent for four days before ultimately shifting responsibility onto Spain, accusing it of having failed to anticipate the consequences of the Spanish Supreme Court’s ruling of 8 July 2026. [9]

The Instrumentalisation of people on the move for geopolitical ends: the boomerang effect of externalisation
Despite these tensions, Spain was quick to reaffirm that Morocco remains above all a strategic ally, reflecting its central role as one of the European Union’s most committed partners in implementing its securitised migration agenda. Spain’s efforts to prevent migration at its southern border depend heavily on Morocco’s cooperation—a dependency that Rabat has repeatedly demonstrated it knows how to exploit.
Morocco has never hesitated to use people on the move as bargaining chips to advance its political and economic interests, influence regional geopolitical dynamics, or express dissatisfaction with Spain’s foreign policy—particularly following Madrid’s rapprochement with Algeria [10] —just as it did during previous diplomatic disputes in 2021 and 2023.
In this respect, the partner countries to which the European Union has externalised migration control have adopted the very same strategy employed by the EU itself -, political bargaining - to occasionally turn against it. Turkey did so vis-à-vis Greece in March 2020; Morocco vis-à-vis Spain in May 2021; and Belarus vis-à-vis Poland from August 2021 onwards. People on the move are thus transformed into instruments of geopolitical negotiation, traded at the expense of their rights, or even their lives.

By delegating migration management to third countries—many of them authoritarian regimes—the European Union distances itself from the human consequences of its externalisation strategy. In doing so, it reduces people seeking to reach Europe to political pawns in the hands of governments that possess a powerful means of leverage over a Europe increasingly shaped by racism and prepared to go to almost any length to keep people on the move away from its borders.

Massive rights violations in the name of protecting Europe’s borders
As in previous episodes involving so-called "mass arrivals" within the European Union, Spain proceeded to return those who had reached Ceuta within just 48 hours. In doing so, it violated their fundamental rights.
Under the Screening Regulation of the European Pact on Asylum and Migration, which entered into force in June 2026, people intercepted in Ceuta should first have undergone the mandatory screening procedure before being channelled either into an asylum procedure or a return procedure. This situation clearly demonstrates that this instrument was a failure just a month and a half after it came into force... Furthermore, those who arrived by sea should—prior to any "handover" (pushback) to Morocco—have benefited from an individual assessment of their circumstances, in accordance with the recent case law of the Spanish Supreme Court. Yet Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explicitly stated that the Court’s ruling would not apply in the present case. It is nevertheless worth recalling that no one may be subjected to forced return without an individual examination of their situation or, where applicable, without having had the opportunity to apply for international protection, as required under the international principle of non-refoulement.

In a further escalation of the securitised response, on 1 August the Spanish Ministry of the Interior announced the installation of a 500-metre floating maritime barrier intended to prevent migrants from swimming between Morocco and Ceuta. The measure appears designed to comply formally with the Spanish Supreme Court’s reference to the need for a "physical containment element" at sea to justify what the authorities describe as "refusals at the border".

The events in Ceuta will therefore have served only to reinforce the European Union’s ultra-securitised migration doctrine and to reaffirm the claim that it constitutes the only possible policy response. After five days of diplomatic tensions, during which the Spanish government was harshly criticised by several European partners, the Prime Minister obtained their support [11] for his swift handling of the political and diplomatic crisis. That episode will soon fade from public memory. So too will the people who lost their lives simply for attempting to exercise their right to mobility and for challenging European migration policies that are repressive, racist and deadly.

The European Union’s embrace of Necropolitics
The events in Ceuta demonstrate, once again if any further evidence were needed, that repressive migration policies kill. They also confirm that the externalisation of border controls—regardless of its human or financial cost—has become one of the central pillars of European migration policies.
The continued partnerships between the European Union and countries such as Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Mauritania, all of which are widely documented as committing serious human rights violations against both their own citizens and foreigners on their territory, provide ample evidence of this reality.

The continuous reinforcement of surveillance and security mechanisms throughout migration routes, combined with the active cooperation of countries of origin and transit in this securitised agenda, has devastating human consequences. As physical and technological barriers have multiplied, the journey to Europe has increasingly become a vast cemetery, claiming thousands of lives and leaving countless others injured. [12]
Although no official assessment has yet been produced regarding the events in Ceuta, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights reports that at least 140 people lost their lives. To date, neither the European Union nor the partner States acting as Europe’s border guards have accepted responsibility for these tragedies. Instead, they continue to be treated as "collateral damage" resulting from a deterrence strategy in which violence—deployed as a means of preventing arrival and keeping people at a distance—has effectively become institutionalised as a governing norm. [13]
Who will identify those who died? Who will conduct the investigations necessary to establish the truth, ensure justice, and provide reparations for the families of those who have become victims of European migration policies? How much longer will European authorities evade their share of responsibility when they themselves have systematically closed off legal pathways to Europe for people on the move, thereby failing in their duties of rescue, protection and solidarity? [14]

The militarisation of borders does not prevent migration
Ceuta also demonstrates that while obstacles placed along migration routes force people on the move to resort to increasingly dangerous alternatives, they do not deter them from crossing borders. No wall, fence or military deployment will ever extinguish people’s aspiration to freedom of movement, particularly among populations in the Global South who are unjustly confined within national borders in an unequal and hyper-connected world.
In Morocco, widespread precarity—characterised by youth unemployment (37% among young people), growing poverty, and a lack of economic and social prospects—combined with the repeated refusal of visas and the stark socio-economic divide separating Morocco from Spain, just 14 kilometres away, has fuelled growing frustration among younger generations. Increasingly, they are asserting that freedom of movement can no longer remain the exclusive privilege of the fortunate few.
In the pursuit of equal opportunities, in the name of equality and human emancipation, people on the move are reclaiming a right to mobility that has been systematically denied to them. In doing so, they remind us that every person has the right to leave any country, including their own—a fundamental human right recognised under international law. [15] Yet it is a right that is routinely violated.

Far from constituting a political failure, the deaths at borders, summary deportations and repeated violations of fundamental rights observed at Europe’s borders have become structural features of a system in which migration is perceived first and foremost as a threat to security rather than as a human reality. The human cost is not incidental; it is intrinsic to a model that prioritises exclusion over protection, and deterrence over solidarity.
As long as mobility remains largely inaccessible, people will continue to risk their lives in search of safety, dignity and opportunities. No level of border militarisation can eliminate migration; it can only make it more dangerous. A fundamentally different approach is therefore needed — one that places human rights, equality, international responsibility and freedom of movement at the heart of migration policies.