So far this year, over 16,760 migrants have survived clandestine voyages from Africa’s west coast to Spain’s Canary Islands, more than 5,500 arriving over just the last two weeks. But in all the time since, “the government never made the effort to build adequate infrastructure, so now we have the port of shame,” he said. “The first immigrants arrived from Morocco 25 years ago,” he said. Antonio Viera, chaplain of the immigrant detention center Barranco Seco in Las Palmas, a little over 30 miles from Arguineguín. Migrant landings on the Canary Islands are not exactly a new phenomenon, according to the Rev. The perilous trip from far-flung Senegal can take up to two weeks in rough waters. With at least 493 deaths recorded so far this year, up from 210 in all of 2019, the route to the Spanish archipelago has seen proportionally more deaths per every arrival than the Central Mediterranean journey from Libya to Italy or Malta. Another 5,000 migrants are being housed in hotels.Īs the latest surge landed, the Grand Canary Island’s already strained immigration services were overwhelmed. The port in front of them is full of pateras and cayucos, the small boats used in the precarious voyage across the Atlantic from West Africa. Those who cannot fit in the few tents provided are sleeping rough on concrete. Most are young men, but there is an increasing number of families and unaccompanied minors. In the port of Arguineguín in the Canary Islands, approximately 2,000 migrants are in police custody, sheltered in a makeshift camp on a pier originally set up as a Covid-19 testing site and emergency shelter for 400 people. The Mediterranean migrant crisis has moved to the Atlantic.
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