So far this year (with data updated until October 22), the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Prosecutor’s Office has opened 1,809 files to determine the age of migrant minors who have arrived alone in the Canary Islands, a figure that multiplies by more than 10 the number of actions carried out throughout last year (175) and which reflects the magnitude of the rebound in arrivals to the archipelago. So far this month, more than 13,000 people have landed in cayuco on the Islands and there are already about 30,000 so far this year. The number of open files in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the highest that the Prosecutor’s Office is aware of and far exceeds the highest recorded so far (750 cases opened in 2021) in this province. Although it is true that, in the 2020 and 2021 crisis, the funnel in these tests occurred in Las Palmas, this year’s figures in Santa Cruz de Tenerife exceed those registered in Las Palmas until now. Tax sources estimate that there were 1,523 age determination files opened in Las Palmas in 2020; 1,388 in 2021; 1021 in 2022; and 785 so far in 2023.
The information was made public this Friday by the Prosecutor’s Office, amid the escalation of accusations made by PP leaders towards the Government’s immigration policy after the transfer to the Peninsula of thousands of migrants who arrived in recent weeks in cayucos to avoid the collapse of Canarian reception. The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, accused the Executive this morning of ignoring migrants and “putting them on planes and leaving them at bus stops”, statements that come a day after the president of the Community of Madrid , Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said that the Government treats immigrants “like burdens” and complained that migrants are transferred from the Canary Islands to other communities “at a time of maximum fear for national security.”
In this context, the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, has chaired a meeting to coordinate the actions of the Prosecutor’s Office on migration in relation to the increase in arrivals of cayucos to the islands. In a note released this afternoon, the public ministry underlines the fundamental objective of the meeting “to guarantee the principle of unity of action of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to protect the rights of migrants, especially minors.” The Prosecutor’s Office’s action in this matter focuses, fundamentally, on age determination files, a series of medical tests—questioned for their inaccuracy—that are performed in Spain to establish whether or not a person is of legal age. The reception of minors who arrive alone is the responsibility of the autonomous communities and currently the Canarian Government protects around 4,400 migrant children, according to the latest data provided by the Minister of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth, Children and Families, Candelaria. Slim.
The Ministry of Social Affairs launched a plan two years ago to apply solidarity between territories so that minors arriving in the Canary Islands could be welcomed in other communities, but between 2021 and 2022, only 348 minors of the almost 540 planned were moved from the archipelago. , and the quota for 2023 is another 400 children. An “insufficient” number, according to what the Canarian president himself, Fernando Clavijo, has said.
Given this situation, fiscal sources indicate that the public ministry is going to implement a shock plan to speed up the age determination files in El Hierro, the island that is experiencing a greater increase in arrivals of cayucos and in which the resources deployed until now by the Prosecutor’s Office were very limited. The prosecutors will move directly to the centers and there will be a prosecutor in El Hierro permanently and on a rotating basis. In addition, the public ministry and the Government of the Canary Islands have agreed to incorporate portable equipment to carry out age determination tests, always with the presence of a forensic expert, at the time the review is made. Furthermore, in July a deputy prosecutor for Immigration, Teseida García, was appointed to coordinate this matter in the Canary Islands.
Participating in the meeting chaired by García Ortiz were the courtroom prosecutor, Head of the Support Unit, Esmeralda Rasillo; the coordinating court prosecutor of the Human Trafficking and Immigration Unit, Beatriz Sánchez Álvarez; the lieutenant prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office, Diego Villafañe Díez; the senior prosecutor of the Canary Islands, María Farnés; the regional delegate prosecutor for Immigration, Teseida García; and the heads of the public ministry of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Beatriz Sánchez Carreras and José Luis Sánchez-Jáuregui, respectively.
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In the latest report from the State Attorney General’s Office, the Canary Islands prosecutors regretted the “delays” that occur in age determinations, especially in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. According to the document, these delays are due to “a combination of factors”, such as “deficits and difficulties in the first police filter upon the arrival of the boats to discriminate between minors and adults”, “interest” of the migrants themselves in hiding their true age, absence of technical means for carrying out diagnostic tests, lack of a permanent forensic doctor, insufficient places in shelters for minors and “administrative and jurisdictional difficulties (between the autonomous Government and the island councils) in the management of the centers and to transfer migrants from the less inhabited islands to others in the archipelago with better conditions.
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