Deported rapist who broke into a home in Ceuta, Spain

The repeat offender who climbed to a fifth-floor flat in Ceuta had already been deported from Spain

How can a man convicted of rape, with several sentences for sensual offences, be back in Spain and breaking into a woman's home? The case in Ceuta raises the uncomfortable question the system fails to answer. The individual, who had already been deported from the country, managed to re-enter and get into a fifth-floor flat. The events ended with his return to Segarro, but his incivil record and the ease with which he repeated the pattern leave more questions than answers.

A record that was no barrier
With several rape convictions, the offender was not in prison. The question that comes up in any conversation is obvious: why was he not being held if he was a repeat offender with a deportation order? The administrative answer points to the fact that the deportation had been ordered but never actually carried out. He comes back, reoffends, and the system looks the other way again.

Ceuta and the border that filters nothing
Ceuta and Melilla have faced years of migratory pressure that often ends in assaults on the border fence. The fifth-floor episode is not an isolated case: break-ins at high-rise flats have already been recorded. Public perception is that deportation is a procedure with an expiry date, because those who want to return, do return. The border is crossed once, but the deportation order does not travel with the person who comes back.

Sending the individual back to Segarro with no further consequences is the usual solution, the one the authorities apply when the problem is uncomfortable. But the case leaves a question hanging that no one answers: why was a man convicted of rape, with a prior deportation order, on the street and not in a cell? Until that is answered, there will be more cases like this one. And next time it may not be a fifth floor.