“Almost all” of the more than 60,000 migrants who invaded the North African Spanish territory of Ceuta last week have been returned to Morocco, we are told, and a “reasonable normality” has been restored to the city of just 80,000.
But this does not mean Spain’s border crisis is over. Far from it. Ceuta is just the latest example of a larger pattern in which foreign actors use mass migration as a weapon to achieve political ends.
The lesson of Ceuta should not be that swift action is an adequate response to mass migration events. It is that immigration laws must be hardened so hostile actors cannot exploit them. Amnesty and permissive asylum policies invite this form of aggression. To deter such hostile, disruptive, frightening, and inhumane tactics — more than 80 people died in the Ceuta incident by drowning or being trampled — the United States and Europe must confront the incentives and vulnerabilities that their current policies create.
Foreign actors have long manipulated migration flows to pressure wealthier democracies. Between 1992 and 1994, supporters of exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide encouraged boat departures toward the U.S. to increase pressure on Washington to restore him to power — an objective ultimately achieved through American military intervention. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi later alternated between permitting Mediterranean migration and offering to suppress it in exchange for European money, diplomatic recognition, and sanctions relief.
Turkey has similarly threatened to “open the gates” to Europe, using the millions of refugees within its borders to seek financial assistance and support for its policies in Syria. In May 2021, Morocco relaxed enforcement around Ceuta after Spain admitted a Western Sahara separatist leader for medical treatment, allowing more than 8,000 migrants to enter the Spanish enclave in roughly two days. Later that year, Belarus, with Russian support, recruited migrants from the Middle East, transported them toward Poland and the Baltic states, and used the resulting border crisis to retaliate for European sanctions.
These campaigns exploit the humanitarian impulses of wealthy democracies, particularly those on the Left obsessed with post-colonial guilt. Studies of dozens of cases have found that migration coercion often works, with aggressors securing some of their objectives in a substantial majority of documented attempts.
There is no evidence that Morocco planned this most recent Ceuta invasion, though it did open border gates, but it had several motives to exert pressure on Spain. Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, had recently renewed relations with Algeria, Morocco’s chief enemy and the principal supporter of Western Saharan independence in a region Morocco claims as its own. Morocco also still wants Spain out of Ceuta and its other North African territory, Melilla, and a migration crisis reminds Spain that security in Ceuta and Melilla depends heavily on Moroccan cooperation. (As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that the two enclaves on the North African coast have been Spanish territory for nearly 500 years, and that the Arabs who occupy North Africa were themselves imperial invaders).
The opening for Moroccan mischief, however, was caused by Spanish weakness. A Spanish Supreme Court decision weeks before the invasion weakened the ability of Spanish law enforcement to return migrants who reached Ceuta by sea immediately to Morocco. That is why, in the days leading up to the invasion, hundreds of migrants swam to Ceuta from Morocco. The Moroccan government exploited this weakness by relaxing its own border enforcement, enabling a mass migration.
Instead of enabling weapons of mass migration through amnesties, asylum, and family reunification, the U.S. and European nations should close the legal vulnerabilities that make migration coercion effective.
Illegal entry should never guarantee release into the interior, access to work permits, or years of litigation before removal. Asylum claims should be screened quickly, limited to genuine persecution, and processed in safe third countries whenever possible. Governments must maintain sufficient detention, deportation, and border-enforcement capacity to prevent hostile states from overwhelming the system and dictating outcomes.
SPAIN’S SOCIALIST BORDER CHAOS
Economically successful nations should also impose sanctions, visa restrictions, and economic penalties on governments that organize or facilitate migrant surges while pressuring transit countries to block them before they reach Western borders.
Empathy is a laudable emotion, but not when it mutates into self-destruction, and it can and will be exploited by the unscrupulous. Mass migration becomes a weapon only when its targets make themselves easy to coerce. Spain, the U.S., and the rest of Europe should deny hostile governments that leverage by restoring control over asylum, detention, and removal. Only after national sovereignty has been fully secured can a humane system for genuine refugees be sustained.