Spain: Interior minister announces three new migration detention centres
10 April 2017
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Spain
Interior minister announces three new migration detention centres
10.4.17
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On Tuesday 4 April the Spanish interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, announced the creation of three new migration detention centres (Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros, CIEs) in Malaga, Algeciras and Madrid.
Zoido announced that the aim is to introduce "higher levels comfort for the detainees and higher levels of efficiency for the public service we have to organise," and that the interior ministry will propose "a new design" so that "all the political groups can participate" in drawing it up.
The interior minister also said that police officers will no longer be responsible for day-to-day staffing inside the centres and will instead be moved to their "perimeters", with other people - it is not yet clear who - employed to take their place.
None of this is likely to motivate political parties and non-parliamentary organisations that have spent years opposing the very existence of CIEs. As one lawyer affiliated to a nationwide campaign against migration detention centres put it, "the only adequate CIE is a closed CIE."
Manuela Carmena, the mayor of Madrid, has said that the proposed new centres are "evidently not" necessary.
There are currently seven detention centres on the Spanish mainland and in the Balearic Islands which in 2015 received a total of 6,930 detainees.
Sources
Manuela Carmena rechaza los tres nuevos CIE propuestos por Zoido y Dancausa los defiende, El Mundo, 5 April 2017
Zoido anuncia la apertura de tres nuevos CIE en Madrid, Algeciras y Málaga y aboga por sacar a los policías de su interior, La Sexta, 4 April 2017,
#CIEsNO: el único CIE adecuado es el CIE cerrado, Extranjería Ius Cogens, 8 April 2017,
And see: campaign to close CIEs:Campaña por el Cierre de los Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros (link)
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