The plenary session of the Constitutional Court unanimously suspended this Tuesday several sections of the protocol for the care of children arriving on board boats and cayucos approved by the Government of the Canary Islands (Canarian Coalition and PP), which was currently already suspended by order of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC).
Sources from the Guarantees Court report that the plenary assembly took this decision after admitting the appeal of the central government, which considers that the contested agreement may violate several fundamental rights as well as regional competences in matters of immigration and assistance to unaccompanied minors.
The Court, after the Government invoked article 161.2 of the Constitution in its challenge, suspended the validity and application of the second, third and sixth articles from September 26, 2024, the date of filing of the challenge.
The Superior Prosecutor’s Office of the Canaries was the first to warn the Canary Islands Executive that the execution of the protocol meant “the absence of immediate attention to the situation of helplessness” in which children and adolescents arrive in the Canaries, this which could cause the government and the officials who applied it to incur the crime of abandonment. It is for this reason that he asked the TSJC for very careful measures to prevent it from starting to be applied.
In the appeal, prosecutor María Farnés emphasized that the protocol “does not specify what are the possible consequences of the non-exercise by the autonomous community of the powers assigned to it by law, such as the protection and immediate assistance to minors. And added: “Unaccompanied foreign minors are always helpless. There is no clearer situation of minors in distress than that of unaccompanied foreign minors. »
”There is no reason to subject a small child who arrives alone to a procedure that does not exist in the law and to delay his entry into an appropriate juvenile center, where the law provides that he must be . Without a doubt, the application of this protocol allows the permanence of unsuspected minors in police centers,” concluded the Superior Prosecutor’s Office of the Canary Islands in a document.
Fernando Clavijo (Canary Coalition), president of the Canary Islands Government, described the conclusions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the warnings of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State of “attack” and “threat” against the Canary Islands as “ridiculous” . Islands.
(There will be an extension)
