Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, January 26, 2024-02:27

  • Immigration The Barajas crisis overwhelms the Interior: 400 immigrants and mountains of garbage

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

The situation at Barajas airport in the face of the asylum seeker crisis is already unsustainable. Overcrowding in the rooms set up for people requesting international protection has reached such a level that many of them have chosen to take the common areas of the airport to escape the crowds and the accumulation of garbage that is concentrated in the waiting rooms. .

Specifically, the T4 satellite - a fairly busy passenger transit area - serves as accommodation for migrants. They have settled there in the absence of solutions. The scene shows the drama of a situation that, far from being redirected, worsens as the days go by. The migrants, mostly from

Senegal

,

Somalia

and

Morocco

, have set up a kind of camp in the common areas of the Madrid airport. They sleep on cardboard that they have placed on the floor, they wash their clothes in the common bathrooms and hang them on chairs and other furniture. The Police have even had to seal some entrances so that other travelers do not circulate through certain corridors where the migrants live.

The more than 450 people gathered in the terminal keep the Ministry of the Interior completely overwhelmed. In fact, as

EL MUNDO

has learned

, yesterday it was necessary to urgently set up a fourth room to house asylum seekers due to the overcrowding registered in these areas. In total there are already four rooms that, in the opinion of the Police, are totally "insufficient" to provide assistance to migrants "in decent conditions."

The 450 migrants are distributed in rooms with capacity for 60 or 70 people (maximum) without the slightest conditions of hygiene and "healthiness," denounce police sources. The food is next to the bags of garbage that are generated throughout the day.

Asylum seekers in the common areas of the airport.

After the abrupt departure of the Red Cross - the assistance and cleaning service manager - due to the terrible conditions in the areas, yesterday members of

UNHCR

, the UN Refugee Agency, visited the facilities, as reported by sources familiar with this inspection. The presence of "prominent members" of the agency was interpreted as a relief from the Spanish NGO, which left after denouncing the "terrible" conditions in which it carried out its assistance work.

His departure also meant that the cleaning service left, forcing rapid action by the Ministry of the Interior. Currently, three people are in charge of undertaking the cleaning tasks. They do it only once a day in the three rooms - four since yesterday - and three bathrooms in which 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 trapped migrants live in overcrowded conditions and among mountains of garbage placed next to food. A good number of them have tried to escape this overcrowded situation by deploying to the public areas of the Barajas airport. They prefer to be there than to live in a few meters and with the garbage next to them. Sources familiar with this situation warn that more and more migrants prefer to settle in these areas while waiting for the asylum they request to be granted or not.

Given the 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 January 20 , 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 crisis in the asylum rooms was uncovered on January 13, when the presence of bedbugs, cockroaches and overcrowding situations emerged. 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, they 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.