The Red Cross served 2,822 people from Algeria in 274 barges on the coast in 2022; 13% were minors and 6.9% women
After two years marked by a very strong increase in the number of immigrants arriving on the coasts of the Region of Murcia from Algeria, in 2022 the volume of people disembarked on the coast fell by around 30%. This is reflected in the statistics managed by the Ministry of the Interior and the Red Cross humanitarian organization, which, although they show a slight difference, make it clear that the mafias that traffic human beings in this area of the Mediterranean Sea had less activity. The drop compared to 2020 stands at 38%.
According to the data provided to LA VERDAD by the Government of Spain, last year 2,813 people were intercepted in their attempt to enter the country irregularly, compared to 3,932 the previous year. Red Cross raises those figures to 2,822 and 4,022 immigrants, respectively.
The increase started with the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, with strong waves of boats in the summer and autumn months. Thus, “in 2020 4,564 people arrived, more than triple that of 2019 (1,439). Previously, the numbers of people served were lower, “said sources from the Red Cross.
Police pressure, with new arrests of ‘pateristas’ and a siege of the mafias, has contributed to the reduction of the figures
Of the total number of foreigners, who arrived in 274 boats at the port of Cartagena, Águilas, Mazarrón and other points along the regional coast, 13% were minors and 6.9% women. Within the first group, made up of 385 kids who had not reached the age of 18, fifty were girls and the authorities also had to deal with 250 unaccompanied minors. In 2021, 479 minors were counted, 303 of them unaccompanied; and in 2020, to 615 minors, of which 474 traveled without the guardianship of an adult.
Likewise, there were twelve pregnant women and two other especially vulnerable groups: fourteen nursing babies and five people with disabilities. There were also 243 medical assistance and eight urgent transfers to hospitals.
dead and missing
The transfer of small boats once again had tragic effects, in the form of disappearances and deaths at sea. Interior declined to offer data, but the Red Cross has registered six deaths of people who left the Algerian coast but could not be rescued during their journey nor have their bodies been located. In addition, members of the Maritime Rescue and the Civil Guard found the bodies of three immigrants whose boat sank in the Calblanque area in December in La Manga and Cabo de Palos.
Before, in September, Maritime Rescue activated the search for ten people who were traveling in a sunken boat in front of San Pedro del Pinatar. In August, the bodies of seven people, including two children, were located in the waters of La Manga, Pilar de la Horadada and Torrevieja by the Civil Guard. Sixteen people were traveling in the boat. And in June, there were four deaths, including a minor, in the sinking of a boat with seventeen occupants. The boy died in the helicopter, after his rescue, due to hypothermia.
State sources linked the lower arrival of immigrants with the pressure against the mafias by the Civil Guard, in charge of maritime surveillance, and the National Police. The Ministry of the Interior did not give updated data, but until August the Immigration Brigade of the National Police in the Region had arrested 60 “pateristas” in two years. The vast majority have been imprisoned and there are more and more unaccompanied minors.
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