Luis F. Duran

Updated Thursday, February 22, 2024-00:58

  • Events A troublesome minor from the Casa de Campo 'menas' center was arrested after threatening to kill the educators and harming himself

  • Casa de Campo Protest against the Batán juvenile center: "We neighbors pay for the excesses of politicians"

The workers at the Casa de Campo menas center have filed a complaint with the police station about the violent robberies that are being recorded in the facility where unaccompanied foreign minors (menas) arrive in the capital.

According to the facts reported by the employees, the teenagers themselves steal clothes, belongings, phones and other objects.

After committing the crime,

they disappear from the premises for several days and days later they return with a lot of money

and with physical evidence of being under the influence of some narcotic substances, according to the workers' complaint.

It was last week when employees and educators reported to the National Police this series of

robberies at the facilities during the night

and during the hours of least surveillance by the security employees of the center located in the Madrid neighborhood of Batán.

They explained to the agents that they had been suffering from these problems for a long time and that they had no choice but to transfer them to the National Police due to the impossibility of stopping these crimes.

In their story, they said that it was a common practice for them to find several broken windows, locks or doors for weeks

in places where only workers and educators have access.

The workers have emphasized that minors disappear with stolen belongings and appear hours or even a day later without those objects, but "with a lot of money on them."

Sometimes it is the National Police and the Municipal Police who bring them back to the center of the Casa de Campo with symptoms of having consumed some type of hallucinogen or drug.

The workers' complaint was made after

catching half a dozen Maghreb minors red-handed stealing

after having forced one of the center's doors.

Officers are now trying to find out who is behind the robberies.

An employee of the center assured this newspaper that "they want to sell a normality in this center that in reality does not exist, we think that

this is not the appropriate place to offer this resource

and that it has been nonsense to increase the capacity by 30% instead to move to a better place.

From the Department of Social Affairs of the Community of Madrid, on which this center depends, they indicated yesterday that

they are "pending the police investigation and what the judge determines in the case."

Last year, the Community of Madrid paid the Antonio Moreno Foundation a total of 2,601,000 euros for the management of the Casa de Campo menas center in the facilities of the former Richard Schirrmann youth hostel.

The regional government has decided to extend the contract with the Antonio Moreno Foundation to maintain the first reception center for unaccompanied foreign minors in Casa de Campo for longer due to the "

current migration crisis that Spain is experiencing due to the poor management of the Government of Sánchez

and his distribution of immigrants, many of them minors.

The contract expired last December and the conditions of the new one have not been published.

VOX has asked the Community of Madrid to close this ore center on several occasions, the last time on January 25 at the regional Assembly.

And the neighbors have also demonstrated asking for the recovery of the shelter.