AENA, responsible for infrastructure at Barajas airport, has still not repaired the holes through which 11 immigrants escaped more than a week ago. The unease among the police officers who provide service at the aerodrome is obvious. They denounce that the AENA’s delay in definitively closing the evacuation routes for immigrants confined in asylum rooms forces it to devote more resources to surveillance tasks, to the logical detriment of other police tasks on the aerodrome.
Criticism against the management of AENA in the Barajas Airport worsen as the JUPOL and SUP unions once again denounce the health and safety failings suffered by asylum rooms, immigrants and the police officers who guard them.
In addition, AENA is accused of negligence, for having taken days, even weeks, to definitively plug the holes used by the immigrants who were the protagonists of the latest escapes from the airport lounges.
Immigrant escapes
The first of this latest wave of leaks took place on Tuesday, October 1, when five North African immigrants They escaped through the conduits of the air conditioning from the asylum room of Terminal 1. The escapees threatened other Colombian immigrants to help them prepare the conduits for the escape. After what happened, the Colombians notified the police, who managed to arrest one of the five escapees.
The second escape was carried out by immigrants with the same profile and under the same conditions: North African immigrants who arrive on “patera flights” to Latin America and take advantage of the stopover in Madrid to get rid of their papers and apply for asylum.
This second escape took place in the early hours of Thursday, October 7, in the asylum room of Terminal 3, through the same hole that the immigrants from the previous escape had made. In just four days there were 11 leaks asylum rooms at Madrid Barajas airport. The Police managed to arrest four of the escapees but the AENA did not definitively plug the holes, it only put an insufficient patch which will allow the situation to repeat itself.
“This will not be completely resolved until one of the police officers or immigrants falls from the roof of the airport”, explain the sources at the airfield in reference to the immigrants who escape through the air holes or the false ceiling to reach the roof and escape from there.
The Barajas migration drain
The airport police largely blame the situation on the state of the installations under the responsibility of the AENA. According to the agents, the reception and asylum rooms are not operational for the great movement of immigrants that Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport continuously supports.
Asylum rooms, according to agents, do not guarantee the safety of staff nor do they prevent the escape of immigrants who arrived illegally in Spain. Security cameras do not cover all sensitive points and the ceilings are simply plasterboardencouraging the continued escapes of immigrants detained in these rooms at Barajas airport.
From the United Police Union (SUP) I did more than five requirements to AENA to repair leak holes and place bars on roofs that immigrants are constantly drilling holes to escape. They have received no response, they claim, from the SUP, which also reported the situation to the Labor inspection without any solution having been executed.
