Spain's top court rules mass deportation of minors to Morocco was illegal

FILE PHOTO: Migrants walk outside a facility prepared for them, accompanied by members of a NGO and Spanish police officers, near the Spanish-Moroccan border, after thousands of migrants swam across this border during the last days, in Ceuta, Spain, May 21, 2021. REUTERS/Jon Nazca/File Photo

MADRID (Reuters) – The deportation of hundreds of Moroccan youths from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in August, 2021 after a mass border crossing was illegal, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled on Monday, dealing a blow to the leftist coalition government’s immigration policy.

The judges dismissed the government’s appeal against an earlier ruling by a local court in Ceuta that had ordered Madrid to ensure the youths’ return to Spain as it deemed their expulsion unlawful.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said it had “maximum respect for judicial decisions” but declined to comment further on the ruling or its practical consequences.

The underage and unaccompanied migrants had crossed into the North African enclave alongside some 12,000 people in May 2021, at the peak of a diplomatic row between Madrid and Rabat over Western Sahara.

Around 700 of them were sent back to Morocco in mid-August following an agreement between the neighbouring countries.

The Supreme Court said the minors’ collective expulsion flouted not only domestic immigration laws, but also breached the European Human Rights Convention.

Spanish legislation requires an individual administrative procedure for each minor who is deported with information on their specific circumstances, and a proper hearing if they are deemed mature enough.

Authorities in Ceuta failed to meet any of these conditions, the Supreme Court ruled, adding that the minors’ rights to physical and moral integrity were violated, as they were “put in serious danger of suffering physical or psychological harm”.

Lawyers for the Spanish government had invoked “exceptional circumstances” due the mass crossings, but the court said the European Convention on Human Rights, of which Spain is a signatory, clearly banned the collective expulsion of foreigners.

(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Ed Osmond)