The Spanish-Moroccan Cooperation on Immigration: The Summary Returns Cases of Isla de Tierra-Alhucemas (2012) and Ceuta and Melilla (2014)

Abstract

The Moroccan territorial claims over the Spanish territories in the North African coast has not been an obstacle for cooperating with Spain on immigration. This political question has not prevented the States from adopting Agreements of a political nature, ad hoc, specifically for the return of Sub-Saharan immigrants from Spain to Morocco after attempts to cross the border fences at Melilla in 2005 and the arrival on the Isla de Tierra-Alhucemas in 2012, enabling this latter episode to revive the bilateral Agreement on readmission of foreigners who have entered illegally, adopted in 1992. But the Spanish practice on hot returns of migrants let us analyze the violation of human rights and the procedural guarantees for the immigrant removal.