Video: Spain Migrant Crisis Surges as Thousands Swim Across Border From Morocco
Multiple thousands of migrants have streamed onto Spanish territory from Morocco in a matter of days, taking advantage of a new loophole after a Supreme Court ruling that ordered police to stop resisting migrants who came by sea.
The local government of Ceuta — a tiny slice of North Africa that is an exclave of Spanish territory otherwise surrounded by Morocco and the Mediterranean — has called on the national government in Madrid to declare a national emergency, deploy the army, and close the border as the city is overwhelmed by an enormous migrant wave. Certainly more than two thousand, with the full number unclear as the surge continues and local law enforcement finds itself unable to cope nor count, are reported to have swam around the small fenced breakwater that demarks the Moroccan and Spanish territorial line.
UPDATE 1930 BST — Army Deploys
Spanish newspaper El Mundo now states that after days of the border crisis and the Ceuta local authorities begging Madrid for help, the army has now finally deployed. Remarkably, the paper further states that previous estimates of arrivals being in the low thousands may be radically wrong and police sources tell them “some 20,000 people have crossed the Ceuta border”. This extraordinary figure is not yet confirmed by official sources.
The Spanish Army is moving toward the Ceuta border with Morocco. pic.twitter.com/UV5swszyU2
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 30, 2026
A column of armoured vehicles has been deployed and there are said to be some 3,000 Spanish troops in the city. Yet given the move by Spain’s Supreme Court to ban migrant pushbacks at the border, and the Spanish socialist government’s openly pro-migrant policies, it is not clear whether the troops will be ordered to actually prevent the situation from continuing to snowball. Just as likely, they will be deployed to assist migrant arrivals and re-establish social services in the city, which have been overwhelmed for days.
The government said in a statement: “The Armed Forces will reinforce the Civil Guard in the exercise of its powers and any other duties that may be necessary to maintain security in the city of Ceuta. The mobilized personnel will be coordinated by the operations command and will provide support to the Civil Guard”. (Read more from “Video: Spain Migrant Crisis Surges as Thousands Swim Across Border From Morocco” HERE)
