Two weeks after over 70,000 Muslim migrants invaded the Spanish city of Ceuta, the siege of the embattled city continues with unknown numbers of migrants still overrunning the area. While Morocco, which allowed the invasion to protest Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez’s recent visit to rival Algeria, is no longer allowing further invasions, many thousands of migrants were left behind.
PM Sanchez, whose plan to legalize over half a million illegal migrants was one of the triggers for the invasion, had promised that all of the migrants would be returned, but viral videos of protests and overrun beaches have made it clear that huge numbers of migrants remain.
According to the El Pais newspaper, “There were 2,000 people on the Trampolín beach alone. To that figure, we must add the impromptu headcount conducted by local residents of minors, over 4,000. Then there are all the people hiding in the hills, and those who have taken refuge in the homes of Moroccan relatives in Ceuta. Based on this, we arrived at a rather revealing estimate: we are talking about a minimum of 8,000 people.” Some local sources however, estimate even larger numbers of migrants… some of whom have even reached Spain proper.
Interviews with local people describe an atmosphere of fear with empty stores and people, especially young women and the elderly, trapped in their homes for fear of being attacked.
While most of the Moroccans have gone home, the even more dangerous second-degree migrants, Afghans, Bangladeshis, Syrians and ‘Palestinians’ have taken over parts of Ceuta. Many of them claim to be minors and the law requires them to be treated as ‘children’.
What is keeping the migrants in Ceuta? The answer in large part is a collection of non-profit organizations, some backed by the Spanish government and the Catholic Church, which continue providing the invaders with food, supplies and encouragement that if they persist, they will be allowed to remain in Spanish territory, then travel to Spain and then across Europe.
Trampolín Beach, once a spot for sunbathers, is the location of the largest encampment of the invaders, where thousands of young men sleep, camp out and receive free food and aid.
Few women dare to visit the beach anymore.
Elma Saiz, the Minister of Inclusion and Migration, arrived and announced that the Sanchez government would be creating four ‘temporary’ humanitarian aid facilities sufficient to care for 1,500 of the invaders even though that is only a fraction of the current occupying population.
While these sites are officially temporary, they will function as refugee camps, complete with toilets, showers and housing, and then allow the migrant invaders to become settled in Ceuta.
The leftist open-borders politician gushed that “Ceuta has demonstrated its pluralism and diversity” by allowing itself to be occupied.
A network of NGOs, including the Diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta,which announced during the invasion “that all collections taken this weekend in Ceuta’s parishes will be allocated to the Diocesan Office for Migrants… the funds will be channelledthrough the San Antonio Migrant Assistance Centre”, has continued feeding and sheltering thousands of invaders.
The San Antonio Migrant Assistance Centre states that “we welcome young migrants arriving in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, in search of a better future. Many of them dream of continuing their journey to the Iberian Peninsula.”
The Center is run by the Scalabrinian missionaries, a religious order originally founded to help Italian immigrants remain devout in America, but has since become a pro-migrant organization (“serving migrants and refugees of different cultures, religions and ethnicities in 35 countries and on five continents”) and the Scalabrinian Agency for Development Cooperation (ASCS), an arm of the Missionaries of St. Charles – Scalabrinians, conducts pro-migrant activities in Ceuta.
The Scalabrinian missionaries also run the Diocese of Cadiz and Ceuta’s migration ministry, and its site promotes a story about the San Antonio Migrant Assistance Centre taking in a migrant named ‘Mohamed’. According to the site, Mohamed invaded Ceuta by swimming “after praying for hours in the mosque across from the beach” and was harbored by the ASCS Centre which asks for donations “to offer protection, dignity and future to young people like Mohamed!”
ASCS runs four centers, three of them at the pressure points of the Muslim invasion of Europe, including Calais, a jumping-off point for the invasion of the UK by Muslim migrants, Ceuta, and Rome. The centers provide not only aid, but “legal guidance” and “inclusion” measures that allow the invaders like Mohamed to not only enter Europe, but to remain there and to colonize it.
The organization describes how one of its centers “is located in what used to be the rectory of Notre Dame Cathedral in the center of Calais, a city in northern France where large numbers of transients hoping to reach the United Kingdom converge” and it is part of a network that “deals with the distribution of basic necessities, comfort goods, offers guidance and accompaniment services at the legal, bureaucratic and health care levels” to the invaders.
The ASCS diary urges taking anger and turning it “into concrete actions which constitute a daily attempt to change things and a clear opposition against border policies” and to “fight for safe and legal avenues of movement for all people who wish to continue their migratory journey across the Channel, or in any other direction” which is to say to invade the United Kingdom.
It vows to “continue to mobilize those who believe that borders should not exist.”
After the Ceuta invasion, the ASCS complained that feeding the migrants was risky because “the army is just a few meters away, and distributing food or water risks being seen as a disturbance of public order. How can one harden one’s heart in the face of all this?”
“As a Church, we have made ourselves available to the relevant institutions and organizations, offering what we have—human and material resources,” ASCS emphasized, but appeared lacking in all sympathy for the native population that had been invaded.
“And it hurts to hear the way people talk about these individuals. Some politicians speak of an ‘invasion,’ as if they were coming to attack; but I see only children, women, young people, and families. Lumping them all together, equating them with criminals, and instilling fear isn’t informing—it’s sowing hatred,” the ASCS diary objected. “It’s heartbreaking even to hear children, from the balconies of the city’s buildings, shouting at the soldiers: ‘Soldier! Soldier! They’re hiding in the church, in the garden! Three have escaped—go back to your own country!’ It’s truly heartbreaking to see how migrants have to hide and beg for help while the army and police chase them.”
The Elin Association, created by the Vedruna Community of Ceuta, part of a 200-year-old Catholic Carmelite community, is even more aggressive in defending the invasion.
Elin claims that “Migration is NOT a problem; it is an ENRICHMENT” and describes Ceuta as a “border city marked by injustices and human rights violations”. Elin conducts weekly protests on behalf of migrants in support of its idea that “migration is a universal right” and that migrants continue to die because of the “racist and xenophobic” insistence on keeping them out.
An Elin spokesman claimed that the migrants might have engaged in violence since “violence can emerge because living conditions are unbearable.”
While there may be some debate about exactly how the invasion happened, what is abundantly clear is that the invaders came because they believed that they could stay and both the Spanish government and a network of open-borders non-profits, some tied to the Catholic Church, have been aiding and enabling their expectation that they will be allowed to enter Europe.
It is these organizations that have maintained the siege of Ceuta by sustaining the migrants.
The transformation of parts of Ceuta into refugee camps will be hard to reverse and eventually the Spanish government will import them into Europe, proving the Meloni government in Italy as well as other critics correct that the invasion would lead to more migrants entering Europe.
This national suicide is being aided by the one organization with the most to lose from it.
Last year, Archbishop Luis Argüello opened the Spanish Bishops’ Conference by warning that Spain was no longer Catholic. “The time has passed, settled for centuries, when we said: ‘I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain.’” He warned that “today we run the risk that our organizations, so dependent on the welfare state… might offer in a weak way the novelty of Christian love and could be easily confused with a very bureaucratic NGO.”
The crisis in Ceuta is a self-inflicted problem, nurtured by the Spanish government and the Catholic Church, that is destroying Spain’s national identity and its Catholic future.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.
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I am trying to recall the name of the patron saint of rapists and sodomites, of which I believe there are quite a few among the Ceuta invaders.
Well written! As always you are clear and concise. As a Catholic and conservative it makes me SICK how this heretic pope is RUINING Spain!!! Jesus, Mary and Joseph pray for Spain and all these countries that are fighting the invasion of Muslims. Strike down the heretic Shepherds who are WOLVES!!!