Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Thursday, January 25, 2024-00:03

  • Immigration Judges ask the Interior to take measures against "overcrowding" in the asylum rooms at the Barajas airport

The asylum area of ​​the

Barajas

airport has already reached disaster category.

The overcrowded and unhealthy

situation

of the 450 people seeking international protection keeps the Ministry of the Interior so overwhelmed that the department headed by

Fernando Grande-Marlaska

has been moving from improvisation to improvisation for two weeks.

The departure last Tuesday of the

Red Cross

- the assistance and cleaning service manager - due to the terrible conditions in the area has aggravated the chaos.

The trapped immigrants live in overcrowded conditions and among

mountains of garbage placed next to the food

;

very illustrative example of the lack of space and hygiene that governs coexistence.

The departure of the NGO imposed a new problem on Grande-Marlaska: cleaning the area.

The Ministry of the Interior, according to institutional sources, has taken charge of the service although, the same sources denounce, it is doing so

"insufficiently

. "

The contracted company

only cleans the three rooms and three bathrooms once a day

where 450 people live, eat, sleep and wash themselves, including many children.

The waste generated from there remains until the next day.

"The unhealthiness is manifest," resolves one of the agents serving in Barajas.

The crisis in the asylum rooms was uncovered on January 13, when the presence of bedbugs, cockroaches and overcrowding in the asylum rooms and inadmissible people at the Madrid airport emerged.

The culmination was the escape of several men through a broken window that overlooked the track.

The SUP union even sent a letter to the Ombudsman,

Ángel Gabilondo

.

The majority of people concentrated in the rooms are African citizens, especially from Senegal, Somalia and Morocco.

Fernando Grande-MarlaskaFERNANDO ALVARADOEFE

The large number of asylum seekers has turned Barajas into a

fraudulent stopover route

, since immigrants - as police sources warn - get rid of their documentation during the flight to, once in Spain, request protection.

Many of them, the same sources reveal, pose as citizens of a country in conflict.

They take tickets to countries where a visa is not required - such as Bolivia, Brazil or El Salvador - but they take advantage of the stopover in Madrid to request asylum.

Airports are one of the points where you can request asylum expressly, through the border procedure, which is not the usual channel.

The process of registering the asylum request at a border post and its admission for processing or rejection by the Office of Asylum and Refuge (OAR), dependent on the Interior, occurs within

a period of between eight and 14 days

.

The situation had been delicate for months, although it boiled over in January.

In fact, last December the Ombudsman asked the Ministry of the Interior and the General Commissioner for Immigration and Borders to adopt "urgently" measures "precise to put an end to the situation of overcrowding", which does not comply with the European directives in asylum matter.

The avalanche of people has forced the Interior to add an extra room in Terminal 2 to those already operational in T1 and T4.

Currently there are 180 people in one of these rooms, 100 in another and 90 in the third.

Another 80 asylum seekers arrived yesterday.

Given the dramatic situation that is being experienced and in anticipation that it could get worse, the Government will impose

transit visas

on citizens with Senegalese passports starting next February 19, as has already happened with those from Kenya since February 20. January, with the intention of avoiding the collapse of asylum seekers once they stop at the airport.

Police unions warn that around

87% of applicants

waiting for their applications to be processed are Senegalese.

Police organizations also demand that these transit visas be also imposed for Moroccans on Royal Air Maroc flights from Casablanca.

The general secretary of the SUP,

Mónica Grácia

, has regretted these days that no one questions the human rights "of people overcrowded in the rooms" and has also harshly criticized the situation in the terminal after denouncing it.

«The abandonment of the Red Cross only increases the pressure on the police officers who work in Barajas and generates an increase in their workload and a worsening of the conditions in which they find themselves, with a significant lack of personnel and sanitary measures. and hygiene to be able to face the catastrophic situation at the Madrid airport," said the general secretary of Jupol,

Aarón Rivero

.