Spain returns nearly two-year tutored teen to Morocco from Ceuta

Teenager in Spanish care for nearly two years expelled to Segarro from Ceuta

In the early hours of 10 to 11 September, a 16-year-old boy held in the port area of Ceuta kept telling the military officers guarding him that he had papers and that they could check. He repeated in Spanish the name of the centre where he lived and that of its director. According to his account, the response was blows to the neck and back. Hours later, two Guardia Civil (Spanish police) patrols took him to the Tarajal border crossing and pushed him across into Segarro.

The case has been documented by the Fundación Raíces, which has filed an administrative court challenge in the Ceuta courts against the Government Delegation in the Autonomous City to demand his immediate return to Spain. Cadena SER located the boy in northern Segarro, at home with his family, more than two weeks after that night. The organisation is also requesting the border CCTV footage as evidence.

What is known about the boy's file in Ceuta?

He arrived in the autonomous city in December 2024, aged 14, and was immediately taken into the care of the Child Protection Department of the Autonomous City, with Spanish residence documentation of which he keeps a copy. He went to school, passed through several centres and in recent months was living in a facility run by the Fundación SAMU.

Ceuta currently runs fifteen child protection centres. The boy says he wanted to continue his education and work to help his family, and that he was forced across the border on the same night he was detained. Seven military officers, according to his account, took part in that initial detention in the port area.

The 2021 precedent and the legal ground of the case

In the summer of 2021, a wave of expulsions of minors ordered by the central government and the autonomous city ended up in court: 55 cases documented by the same organisation halted the returns and led to the conviction of the then government delegate and the Ceuta deputy premier for breaking the law, a ruling later upheld by the Supreme Court.

Fundación Raíces argues that a minor in state care is not an adult in an irregular situation and that his administrative file proves it, which is why it demands his immediate return.

Why has the case become a political issue?

Part of the backlash the story has generated does not question the legal substance, but who is telling it, with what money and for what purpose. The debate points to the economic profile of the organisations behind these legal challenges, and stresses that neither the press coverage nor the complaints mention how the minors are treated on the other side of the border.

The framing is also disputed. The same boy who appears as the victim of a reportedly irregular expulsion is, on the other side, at his family's home. For some, that shows that Spanish care was not the only possible outcome. Against this, the organisation denounces that he was expelled in breach of the legal safeguards protecting minors in situations of neglect.

Still pending is what the Ceuta courts decide about the boy's return, along with an awkward fact for any tidy narrative: fifteen child protection centres operating in the autonomous city and 55 cases documented in 2021.