The Spanish government will have to explain to the Supreme Tribunal the measures it has taken to relocate over one thousand migrant minors out of the nearly 5,000 currently hosted in the Canary Islands.
The Spanish Supreme Tribunal has called for the government to explain itself on May 29 regarding the measures it adopted to relocate more than a thousand migrant minors, from among the approximately 5,000 currently hosted in the Canary Islands.
This follows the government’s failure to respond to the Court’s previous request for precautionary measures.
According to an order of the administrative litigation chamber of the Supreme Tribunal, as cited by the wire agency Europa Press, the representatives of government administration will have to inform the judges of the initiatives adopted in response to the Tribunal's request of March 25. That order established a ten-day deadline for the State to assume leadership of the national sheltering system for international protection, specifically to accommodate at least 1,000 unaccompanied migrant minors currently living in extremely overcrowded conditions in the Canary Islands.
The Tribunal noted that the response from the central government "seems to underscore that the Tribunal's request was not respected in its terms." Thereby, the government will have to "provide information concerning the shelter resources assigned to each" of the minors and "provide a detailed description of the cases that still need to be assigned" for sheltering.
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The decision follows an appeal by the Canary government
The decision of the Tribunal follows an appeal presented by the Canary government in January, after the central executive branch ignored its request to guarantee access to the international protection system to migrant teenagers and children.
The judges had examined the competencies of the two administrations and concluded that the management of the issue was the responsibility of the State's Migration Secretariat, in accordance to the laws in place, while the migrants remain guest of the Canary islands in a situation that is "incompatible with the superior interests of minors".
Although multiple meetings were held between central and regional authorities, resulting in an agreement to address the situation on a "case-by-case" basis, the Tribunal found this response inadequate.