The Ministry of the Interior has installed a floating barrier in the sea in Melilla similar to the one it placed in Ceuta a few days ago after tens of thousands of people entered the autonomous city on July 30.
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According to EFE, the barrier is already installed at the end of the southern breakwater of Melilla, a 500-meter-long jetty that serves as a land and sea border in the southern area of the city and separates it from the Moroccan port of Nador.
This barrier, which is now also a reality in Melilla, adds to some construction fences that were installed last week at the final stretch of the southern breakwater, which lacked a border perimeter and where there were only ripraps, to enable border rejections in case of an attempt of irregular entry by sea.
According to police sources reported to EFE, the installation of these fences a week ago was a “consequence” of the Supreme Court ruling that prevents carrying out border rejections, also known as ‘hot returns’, to those who try to access Ceuta and Melilla by swimming.
The southern breakwater is currently closed to vehicle and pedestrian traffic for security reasons, coinciding with the solar eclipse, as EFE has verified.
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The Ministry of the Interior had planned these maritime barriers in an instruction issued by the State Secretariat for Security on the installation of border containment elements at the maritime borders of the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, since it is the tool that will allow border returns without violating the Supreme Court ruling.
The Interior instruction, accessed by EFE, aims to “provide the State Security Forces and Corps with the necessary legal security to carry out the border rejection of migrants detected at the maritime border line of the territorial demarcations of Ceuta and Melilla during their attempt to overcome the border containment elements established for this purpose.”
The Government delegate in Melilla, Sabrina Moh, also confirmed that “containment elements” were going to be installed in the sea in Melilla, as in Ceuta with the floating barrier, although “adapted” to the needs and reality of Melilla, and specified that work had been underway “from the first moment” the Supreme Court ruling was known.
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