The Official Gazette of the Canary Islands published on Thursday a new protocol that establishes more requirements for the delivery to the Government of the Canary Islands by the State Security Forces of unaccompanied migrant minors who arrive on the islands, a measure that sharpens the pulse that keeps the Regional Executive with the Central Executive for immigration reasons. The new text requires a series of measures that, according to the Canary Islands government, were included in the 2014 protocol and that they have not been respected until now, which generates “disorder”, according to the legal text, and slows down the entry into reception structures of new arrivals.
Among other issues, the Executive demands from this Thursday a prior control of identification and registration in the Registry of Minors (RMENA). It demands, in turn, an administrative resolution of individualized assignment or location from the corresponding public body, and that for this there has been a prior hearing of the minor, in the presence of an interpreter of his mother tongue or another that he can understand. , and that this has happened with the knowledge of the Public Prosecutor's Office. Once the availability of a place has been confirmed, it will finally be necessary to proceed to a formal delivery ceremony with individualized documents and that this takes place in a police station of the Autonomous Police of the Canaries or, “if there is none, in authorized places.”
The Canary Islands Executive assures in the text that accompanies the new protocol that there is a “disorder” in the delivery of minors by the National Police to the personnel of the entities. This delivery is carried out, it assures, “without direct control of the Autonomous Administration nor individualized administrative resolution of location or assignment of the minor by the State in the Canary Islands, nor decree of the Public Ministry placing the minor at the disposal of the minor.” For this reason, government sources assure, “it is not possible to correctly identify” each minor, since in the grouped delivery the photograph that links him to his name does not appear, so “their identification and traceability are at risk”, with the consequence of a “confusion of identities between minors”.
The publication of this new protocol coincides with a moment of extreme tension between the central government and the government of the Canaries due to the return of some of the approximately 5,600 unaccompanied migrant minors that the archipelago protects. This Tuesday, the Canarian president, Fernando Clavijo, turned his back on the PSOE (with which he has an investiture agreement) and publicly formalized an agreement with the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to unify the criteria on how the obtaining of the minors migrants between communities. This alliance has caused unrest in La Moncloa.
Previously, on Monday, September 2, Clavijo himself had exploded in front of the media against the executive of Pedro Sánchez. That day, he threatened to sue the State for the rescue of the minors after a clash the previous Friday, as he explained, between the police, the prosecutor's office and NGO leaders on a dock in El Hierro. This episode served the nationalist leader to ensure which would require strict compliance with admission protocols, approved by the government of Mariano Rajoy in 2014, so that the General Directorate for the Protection of Children and Families would assume its guardianship. “We are not going to be complicit in the normalization of an emergency situation where the rights of the minor cannot be guaranteed,” he assured at the time.
On the same day 2, the Council of The government of the Canary Islands has approved a proposal for an agreement which prohibited collaborating entities “from welcoming new migrants at the expense of this autonomous community, unless prior communication of conformity or express authorization from the competent autonomous authorities.” This decision led the NGO Spanish Network of Immigration and Assistance to Refugees to file on the 10th before the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands a contentious-administrative appeal against this movement, which it considers “contrary to the fundamental rights of minors and the best interests of the minor.”
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The Canary Islands have declared themselves “overwhelmed” for months with the arrival of unaccompanied minors. The central and regional governments prepared a proposal to reform the immigration law that should have allowed the transfer of minors to other autonomous communities. However, PP, Clavijo's government partner in the Canary Islands, Junts and Vox rejected its examination in Congress on July 23. The PSOE, the Popular Party and the Government of the Canary Islands held various meetings during the summer to reconcile positions, with both parties: the central government, on the one hand; Autonomous Executive and PP on the other, accusing each other of lack of agreement.
Until August, 25,524 people arrived in the Canary Islands by canoe, 6,267 of them during the months of July and Augusta record figure for a summer since there are detailed monthly records of migratory flows. In the second half of August, arrivals to the Canary Islands soared with 3,220 new cases, meaning that almost half of this summer's migrant entries were recorded in the last fortnight, according to data from the bi-weekly report made public this Monday by the Ministry of the InteriorOf this total, according to the Canary Islands government, 3,418 are minors.