Ceuta plans second eviction after hundreds of migrants return to Trampolín beach
The Government of Ceuta and its cleaning crews will, on Friday, try to clean up Trampolín beach for the second time, according to the newspaper "Faro de Ceuta". There, they will first attempt to carry out a new eviction of the approximately 500 migrants, although there are no official figures, who are thought to have returned over the course of Thursday afternoon to this kind of makeshift camp, after being transferred to temporary reception centres that same morning.
The situation appeared to have been resolved on Thursday when cleaning crews entered after the initial eviction, but over the course of the afternoon, the migrants returned to the makeshift camp. The migrants fear, in part, that their relocation to the four new centres opened by the central government will be a first step towards their expulsion to Morocco.
Numerous encampments or shacks have been put up this week on Trampolín using reeds, plastic bags and cardboard. The figures for those camping there are once again all over the place, depending on which authority is asked, as is the number of transfers on Thursday morning to the temporary facilities at Loma Margarita and El Embolsamiento, which have a capacity of 1,800 people.
While the police say that around 4,000 people were evicted, government sources cut that figure to 1,500.
Local media report that the government of the Afro-European exclave withdrew the cleaning operation because it could not guarantee the workers' safety after the gradual return of the homeless, and that it plans to do the same if the situation is not brought under control on Friday.
Juan Vivas, the president of Ceuta, has been critical of the operation: "Moving them from Trampolín to other places in Ceuta does not show a willingness to solve the problem."
The other two sites agreed with Vivas's government are the Hípica facilities, a military base, the former football pitch of the Cavalry barracks and the El Guano area. The Minister for Migration, Elma Saiz, said they would increase the number of new places for migrant reception to 4,000.
The Red Cross distributed around 4,000 food bags in the surrounding area on Thursday, which partly explains the influx at El Trampolín: many are not temporarily housed there and simply go to the beach to get something to eat. During the night, in addition to the makeshift encampments, journalists in the area saw around 10 tents pitched on the sand.