White House Blasts Spanish Government as Thousands of Migrants Surge From Morocco, Emergency Request Denied

The White House bashed Spain’s left-wing government after the border between Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta and Morocco collapsed Thursday.

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Ceuta’s president formally requested a national emergency declaration Thursday after more than 2,000 migrants crossed the border from Morocco in the past 10 days. Videos showed chaotic scenes of migrants pouring into the Spanish territory.

Video shows hordes of apparently military-aged men smiling and posing for cameras, some carrying swimming flippers, and sprinting through the streets as authorities struggle to corral the unruly masses.

Other footage shows crowds of migrants emerging from the sea, climbing up onto Ceuta’s rocky shores and working their way around border fences.

Ceuta President Juan Jesús Vivas formally requested that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declare a national emergency to help respond to the border crisis, Spanish media outlets reported. Madrid, however, denied the request.

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Ceuta’s government, in its request for a national emergency declaration, noted that immigration from Morocco is always a problem for the Spanish enclave but claimed the last 10 days represented a peak “of particular intensity.” That peak has seen more than 2,000 migrants cross the border in the past 10 days, Ceuta officials said, according to El País.

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Sánchez, for his part, has claimed that accepting migrants is necessary to keep Spain’s economy alive, arguing the country’s low birth rates necessitate accepting immigrants.

“The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate,” Sánchez wrote in a February op-ed in The New York Times.

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