Illegal Entry as Crime: Debate on Prison Until Deportation in Spain

Unauthorized entry is a fine, not jail: the push to incivil it

Entering Spain without authorization is not a crime. It is a serious administrative offense, punishable by a fine ranging from €501 to €10,000. This is the legal starting point for one of the most repeated proposals in Spanish political forums: turning illegal entry and irregular stay into incivil offenses, with indefinite imprisonment until deportation is executed. The idea, defended vigorously in a thread with 132 replies over two years, rests on a simple premise: if entrants know they will end up behind bars, they will stop trying.

The diagnosis accompanying the proposal is more grandiose than its data. It argues that politicians create problems and then declare them unsolvable, and that an opaque business exists around irregular immigration. According to this line of reasoning, part of the more than €300 million the EU allegedly allocated in 2024 to Mauritania and countries of origin would be diverted to third countries outside tax control, with commissions paid to local police at the source allowing boats to depart. None of this is supported by documentary evidence in the available material.

What the Penal Code says and what the proposal would change

Current legislation distinguishes between administrative offenses and crimes. Crossing the border without authorization, or staying in Spain without legal status, is punished with fines, not deprivation of liberty. The proposal circulating in the thread consists of moving these behaviors to the Penal Code and attaching an indefinite prison sentence, conditioned solely on effective deportation.

The argument supporting it is deterrent: if irregular migrants knew they would be jailed from the first minute, the flow would stop abruptly. Defenders add that, since it is not a crime, people in irregular situations access hotel spots and maintenance funded by taxpayers. The technical objection is evident: an indefinite sentence until deportation raises constitutional and international law issues, besides requiring the country of origin to accept readmission, which does not always happen.

The cost of NGOs and the reception business

Part of the analysis claims there is an economic industry built on reception. It asserts that some NGO European offices have staff earning net salaries above €8,000 per month, and that certain international agencies dedicate millions in budgets to travel and structure. The conclusion drawn is that there is a material interest in keeping the flow going.

The most frequently repeated data point concerns chartered flights from the Canary Islands. According to circulated information, the Ministry of Migration, in collaboration with the Red Cross, would be operating Air Europa planes with an average of 200 people daily. This figure illustrates that transfer from the archipelago to the mainland is part of the ordinary reception system, not an exception.

Canary Islands, Barajas, and the trickle of arrivals

The figures handled in the thread are specific on one point: more than 46,000 people allegedly arrived in the Canary Islands via irregular routes in the year discussed. To this sum are added entries through Barajas airport and hidden coves in the Balearic Islands, Málaga, and Cádiz. The conclusion is that the phenomenon is not only maritime nor exclusively Canarian.

Criticism is nominally directed at the Ministry of Interior and the Presidency of the Government, to whom political responsibility for the situation is attributed. Resignation demands are repeated without any institutional response recorded in the thread. The tone is one of sustained exasperation, not technical analysis.

Hot returns, watchtowers, and other solutions

Among the alternatives proposed, the most repeated is "hot return": sending back intercepted persons without processing any file. Physical reinforcement of the border is also mentioned, with proposals reaching talk of combat towers. Another line argues that the identification problem is insurmountable: without documentation from the country of origin, there is no way to execute a deportation, making any penal threat empty paper.

Some take the argument to the realm of sovereignty: as long as the State controls all migration policy, no local assembly can decide who it admits. The minority proposal suggests that each assembly with a coast or airport decides and keeps the people it accepts.

The limit no one sets

The question running through the thread from start to finish is not legal, but arithmetic: how many people fit in the system before it breaks. It is argued that there will be neither work nor resources for everyone, and collapse will come from saturation. Against this, the perceived institutional response is that the issue is complex and requires European solutions.

This is exactly where the analysis stalls. The proposal to incivil classify irregular entry has a clear deterrent logic and an equally clear execution problem: without identification or readmission, prison becomes indefinite stay, which is precisely what defenders want and critics deem unfeasible. No one has untied the knot yet.