After two court decisions against the authorities of the city of Sebta for having broken the law and the administrative procedures for the repatriation of unaccompanied minors to Morocco, the latter went to the Spanish Supreme Court to try to circumvent them.
The court was therefore seized to study the feasibility of returning unaccompanied Moroccan minors without examining the administrative file under a bilateral agreement signed with Morocco in 2007.
It will be a question of analyzing article 5 of the agreement on “cooperation in the field of the prevention of illegal emigration of unaccompanied minors, their protection and their concerted return”.
The magistrates will also have to see if the provisions of Spanish law on the rights and freedoms of foreigners in Spain are in phase with this project to circumvent the instruction of an administrative file for the return of unaccompanied minors.
This procedure follows events dating back to August 2021, with the arrival of several unaccompanied Moroccan minors in Sebta and their immediate return by the local authorities through the border post without delay to request asylum or study their situation.
The administrative court of the city of Sebta then ordered the government delegation to adopt the necessary measures to carry out the return of unaccompanied minors who had been repatriated to Morocco in mid-August 2021.
The court in Sebta ruled that the city’s government delegation had violated the laws on the repatriation of unaccompanied minors, by returning the minors without a repatriation file.
According to the court’s judgment, the Moroccan minors were sent back to Morocco without even the opening of a procedure, “neither request for reports, nor phase of allegations, nor hearing procedure, nor phase of evidence, not even a resolution accepting the repatriation of minors”.
The city government and the general public prosecutor’s office had lodged appeals against this decision before the Superior Court of Justice located in Andalusia, considering that the rights of minors had not been violated and emphasizing that it was a “special” situation.
They also felt that they had received “maximum guarantees” that the minors would be reintegrated into their families. But the higher court of justice refused their appeal, pushing them to go to the Supreme Court to defend the applicability of the bilateral agreement signed in 2007 in this case.