A third boat has brought the number of migrants arriving in the Balearics over the past few hours to 63, specifically in Formentera and Cabrera. According to the Government Delegation in the Balearics, at 1:38 p.m. on Monday, 25 people of Maghreb origin were rescued 23 miles southeast of Cabrera. The operation involved the Command’s Citizen Security Unit (Usecic) and Maritime Rescue.
In addition, this morning another 17 people of North African origin were rescued two miles southeast of the island of Formentera, and on Sunday, 11 more migrants were rescued aboard a small boat in Formentera. On Monday, the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, agreed with his Algerian counterpart, Said Sayoud, to strengthen the fight against criminal human trafficking networks by ‘updating’ the return protocol and promoting new measures to ‘limit’ the use of speedboats, as well as against document fraud.
During Marlaska’s fourth visit to Algeria, which culminates this afternoon with a meeting with the country’s president and Minister of Defence, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the Home Secretary thanked the North African country for its work, highlighting that in 2024 it ‘intercepted 30,000 illegal departures’. According to a press release from the Home Office, Marlaska and his Algerian counterpart, the Minister of the Interior, Local Authorities and Transport, Said Sayoud, have committed to strengthening the fight against human trafficking ‘to be more effective in this shared challenge’.
Marlaska spoke of Algeria as a ‘key partner’ in tackling the ‘growing phenomenon’ of criminal networks which, in addition to trafficking people, ‘risking their lives, have increased their links to drug trafficking’. The latest statistics on irregular arrivals of migrants to Spain by sea and land show a 35.9% decrease up to 15 October. The decrease in arrivals to the Canary Islands by sea is notable, with a 59% drop, while irregular arrivals to the mainland and the Balearics, the so-called “Algerian route”, show an increase of 22% compared to the previous year, with 12,252 arrivals recorded - 6,104 to the islands alone, i.e. 75% more.
The two delegations analysed new possibilities for bilateral cooperation, already advanced at the recent meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee for the Agreement on Security between Spain and Algeria, held on 13 October in Madrid. The two ministers have therefore committed to ‘relaunching’ the 2002 return agreement. ‘A joint technical commission will analyse whether it needs to be updated to be more effective,’ explained Marlaska after the meeting, which also announced collaborative measures to combat document fraud and limit the use of speedboats.
During the meeting, the interior ministers agreed on the importance of ‘intensifying’ the exchange of information between the security services responsible for investigating organised crime, as well as sharing working protocols and promoting the detection of false documentation.