Morocco thwarted over 350,000 migration attempts to Europe in five years, new data reveals

Authorities in Morocco have thwarted 366,000 migration attempts to Europe and dismantled over 1,500 migrant trafficking networks over the past five years, the Ministry of Interior said on Saturday.

In 2023, at least 117 migration networks were dismantled as of May, the ministry said as cited by the official Moroccan agency Hespress. During the same period, 25,519 attempts at irregular migration to Europe were thwarted. 

In 2022 alone, 290 networks were broken up, while 70,781 attempts were aborted, they added.

The data also show that rescue operations at sea involved some 90,000 migrants since 2017. In 2022, 12,478 migrants were rescued at sea, compared with 3,150 at the end of May 2023

In 2022, over 500 organisers and intermediaries were arrested, along with 415 organisers of illegal immigration.

The latest data comes as protesters demonstrated in the Spanish enclave of Melilla on the one-year anniversary of a tragic incident where 37 migrants – mostly from Sudan – died on the fence that seals off Melilla from Morocco.

Both Moroccan and Spanish authorities were heavily criticised for failing to conduct adequate investigations into the human stampede on 24 June 2022, in which around 2,000 migrants were involved.

The authorities’ failure was deemed a violation of international law and human rights by rights groups such as Amnesty International. Amnesty also accused Madrid and Rabat of covering up their involvement in the fatal crush and for not disclosing the true number of deaths.

Morocco maintains that 23 people died in the incident.

Migrants often attempt to cross into Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta, which is EU territory, through wired fences that separate the territories from the North African kingdom.

According to the data, 17,500 migrants in 100 attempts were prevented from crossing into the enclaves in the last five years.  

Moreover, clandestine migration to the Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean had increased in recent years. The closest island to the African continent lies 100 kilometres from the west of Morocco.

Morocco, much like Tunisia and Libya, is often used by both North and sub-Saharan migrants as a transit point to Europe, notably Spain and France.