The Higher Prosecutor’s Office of the Canary Islands appealed this Wednesday The Canary Islands protocol for the care of migrant minors unaccompanied The plan approved by the Regional Executive imposes a series of prior police procedures that slow down the entry into the protection system of children and adolescents who arrive in the Archipelago on board boats and canoes. The Public Ministry considers that the measure imposed by the Canarian coalition government and the Popular Party violates the fundamental right to the principle of equality recognized in Article 14 of the Constitution and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the fundamental right to moral integrity recognized in Article 15 of the Constitution.
The appeal, to which this editorial team has had access, was presented before the Administrative Contentious Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands. In it, the Prosecutor’s Office asks the Court to suspend the protocol, because “its execution implies the lack of immediate attention to the situation of helplessness” in which minors arrive on the shores of the Canary Islands.
The protocol was published on Thursday in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands. The document specifies that the reception of a migrant minor by the autonomous community will require prior identification, registration of the young person in the Registry of Unaccompanied Foreign Minors (RMENA) and an administrative resolution of individualized assignment or location from the State in the presence of an interpreter. In addition to these three documents, the General Administration of the State must inform the regional government of the existence of a migrant minor “in a position to be delivered.”
At that time, the Canary Islands will have to “check” the availability of places for the child to be taken into care in a center. According to the regional government, the objective is “the necessary organization” of the reception of children. Finally, the “surrender” must be made before a regional police officer or an authorized public agent, who must provide individualized documentation on the minor and the conditions in which he or she is.
This decision was adopted by the Executive chaired by Fernando Clavijo (CC) in the midst of a humanitarian emergency and with 5,600 children and adolescents housed in precarious centres. The Prosecutor’s Office has been clear about this protocol. ”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 centre for minors, where the law provides that he should be. Without a doubt, the application of this protocol allows the permanence of unsuspected minors in police centres”, concluded the Attorney General of the Canary Islands, María Farnés, in a document.
A possible order
This Tuesday, after igniting his relations with the State, the President of the Canary Islands traveled to Madrid to meet with the ministers responsible for immigration. The Central Executive received Fernando Clavijo after accusing the government of Pedro Sánchez of having “abandoned” the archipelago, despite the fact that the autonomous community is responsible for the care and protection of unaccompanied foreign minors who arrive in the Canary Islands. In a press conference after the meeting, Clavijo hinted that the protocol could be an order: “We have managed to get the Spanish government and the PP to sit down. If this agitation has made them sit down, welcome.” Another of the pressure measures implemented by the Canary Islands has been the installation of tents on the docks so that the young people can spend “a few days” until they are transferred to other facilities.
In his statements to the media, Clavijo also described as “ridiculous” the argument of the prosecution regarding the discriminatory nature of the protocol. The Public Ministry stressed that the document of the Regional Executive does not take into account “nor does it analyze the repercussions that police intervention can have on minors, especially if they are foreigners and alone.”
“It is clear that a minor who has just arrived on land after a journey in which his life was put in danger is not in a position to be heard with guarantees, and even less, as the protocol seems to indicate, to declare that he has a family member or close friend elsewhere than in the Canary Islands and that, therefore, action must be taken in this sense, since this would imply a clear risk for the minor”, argues the text signed by María Farnés.
This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers also took the first step to bring the Canary Islands protocol before the Constitutional Court. The Government has agreed to request an urgent opinion from the Council of State on a possible “conflict of powers”. This legal battle is in addition to the complaint filed against the regional executive by the Spanish Network for Assistance to Immigration and Refugees for an alleged violation of the fundamental rights of children.
