On July 30, 2026, enormous crowds crossed from Morocco
into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta. Within hours,
Spanish authorities estimated that roughly 72,000
had entered Ceuta, overwhelming a city of just
83,000 residents. Spain’s other North African enclave,
Melilla, also
experienced attempted crossings, albeit on a much
smaller scale, and closed down its border crossing with
Morocco later that day.
Madrid’s response involved
roping in the police, military, and migrant services. Many
who entered had little intention of remaining, with roughly
70,000
returning to Morocco over the next few days, leaving
Spanish authorities to deal with hundreds
of unaccompanied minors who stayed.
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The “mass
crossing” was preceded by several developments. Spain
began the process of regularizing 500,000
undocumented migrants in April. And, in July, the
country’s Supreme Court ruled that “migrants arriving by
sea would not face immediate removal,” according
to Euronews, which increased the country’s appeal as a
destination for those looking to immigrate. “We discussed
this ruling and its impact. We explained that this ruling
was going to create a problem. And it did create a
problem,” said a Moroccan senior official.
The
incident, however, could not have occurred without at least
the tolerance of Morocco’s government. Rabat denied
involvement, while Spain’s interior minister, Fernando
Grande-Marlaska Gómez, blamed “criminal
mafias” for the crossings. Ceuta’s regional
president, Juan Jesús Visas, however, claimed that the
crossings were “if not orchestrated, at least encouraged
or permitted by Morocco,” stated
The Guardian.
Spain’s pledge
on July 20 to rebuild ties and deepen cooperation with
Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, provided some incentive
to fuel the crisis. On July 23, Spain also advanced a proposed
legislation granting an expedited path to citizenship
for Sahrawis born in Western Sahara when it was still a
Spanish colony, before
August 1977. The proposal would also extend to their
descendants, further aggravating tensions between Madrid and
Rabat.
Spain’s criticisms
of Israeli and US military operations in the Middle East
also strained relations with Washington, at a time when
Morocco is assuming an important
role in US regional diplomacy. Since joining the Abraham
Accords in 2020, Morocco has developed
close military, intelligence, and economic ties with Israel,
while receiving US backing for its position on the Western
Sahara. Spain has meanwhile emerged as one of Europe’s
most vocal critics of Israeli policy in Gaza and has
denounced the US and Israel’s war on
Iran.
Meanwhile, the 2027 House Appropriations
Committee report, accompanying a bill passed
on July 15, gave credence to Morocco’s claims over
Ceuta and Melilla, reinforcing Rabat’s confidence. Against
this backdrop, the situation in Ceuta unfolded as tensions
between Spain and an increasingly aligned Morocco, Israel,
and the US were already mounting. Jerusalem and Washington
had little incentive to defend Madrid as Rabat has become an
increasingly important partner to both. Israeli and American
figures subsequently seized on the Ceuta crisis to criticize
Madrid’s “liberal
migration policy” and the Sanchez
government.
The episode, while another demonstration
of how governments can employ migration as an instrument of
statecraft, is consequently entangled in these tensions
between Spain on one side and Morocco, Israel, and the US on
the other. “When a state perceives shifts in the regional
balance of power, borders often become the first arena
through which strategic messages are conveyed,” stated
The Jerusalem Post. The changing balance of power in
the region has led to Ceuta emerging as more than a border
city. “[I]t is one of the places where the future balance
of power between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East
is beginning to take shape.”
This isn’t the first
influx of migrants from Morocco to Spain. In
2021, after Spain admitted the leader of a movement
seeking independence for Western Sahara, Brahim Ghali, for
COVID-19 treatment, Morocco relaxed border controls and
roughly 8,000 people entered Ceuta over two
days.
Spanish authorities labeled the move as “blackmail,”
and as The New York Times noted
at the time, “hours after the migrants began pouring into
Ceuta, Spain approved 30 million euros, about $37 million,
in aid to Morocco for border policing.” In 2022,
Spain’s foreign minister was replaced, and Madrid reversed
its longstanding position on Western Sahara, backing
Morocco’s proposal. “Five years later, when a larger
crossing occurred amid a different set of Spanish disputes,
that structural vulnerability had still not been addressed.
This does not mean 2026 repeated 2021’s mechanics. It
means the vulnerability 2021 exposed was still there to be
exploited, deliberately or not,” pointed
out the Middle East Political and Economic
Institute.
The latest crisis is far larger, and Spain
is again negotiating with Morocco over migration and
bilateral relations. But the consequences are not just for
Spain. Although migrants arriving in Ceuta cannot
automatically travel onward to mainland Spain or the wider
EU, the enclave’s
status makes these border crossings a European
issue.
Italy
and France
quickly floated tighter border controls with Spain, drawing
support
from other EU members and pushback from Madrid. But
their tensions mask a collective anxiety and frustration
over irregular migration to the bloc and the growing ability
to exploit the issue as a diplomatic tool.
The Roots
of Europe’s Vulnerability
Governments have long
viewed outward migration as a domestic safety valve for
overcrowding, unemployment, and unrest. Britain transported
convicts and political
dissidents to its colonies, alongside millions
of its poorer citizens. Only in recent decades, however,
has migration become a tool of interstate coercion used
mainly against the US and Europe.
The US encountered
the phenomenon first. During Cuba’s 1980 Mariel
Boatlift, Fidel Castro allowed more than 125,000
dissidents, prisoners, and economic migrants to leave for
Florida, followed by another 35,000
Cubans during the 1994 Balsero crisis. While Haiti also
generated smaller
migration surges during the same period, US Coast Guard
interceptions and offshore processing at Guantanamo Bay or
third countries demonstrated Washington’s ability to limit
coercive migration surges.
Europe’s exposure to
migration developed more gradually as integration
accelerated and the continent became a net importer
of migrants after World War II. By the 1990s, the
collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia generated
migration within Europe, while Algeria’s civil war and
instability elsewhere in Africa drove migration north. This
coincided with the beginning and expansion of the Schengen
area, alongside affordable air travel and international
smuggling networks, which made movement into and across
Europe much easier.
Unlike the US, with its relative
maritime isolation and ability
to restrict its land border with Mexico, the EU was
tasked with policing thousands of miles of Mediterranean
coastline, numerous islands, external land borders such as
Ceuta, and a growing eastern frontier. The EU also exercises
less influence over neighboring transit states looking to
pass migrants along, while its common asylum system has made
irregular migration a collective European
issue.
Conflict and Migration Leverage
Former
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was among the first to
recognize Europe’s vulnerability. As he began
normalization efforts with the West by the end of the 1990s,
Gaddafi linked “migration
management to renewed cooperation,” securing billions
of euros in funding for border control, according to a
report produced under the 2024–27 “Securitization
Without Security” project. During a 2010 visit to Italy,
Gaddafi suggested Libya needed “at
least €5 billion a year” to prevent much larger
migration flows from Africa and beyond.
Libya’s
importance to Europe’s migration security became clear
when protests in the country turned into civil war in 2011.
Italy’s islands have typically been the choice for
migrants departing Libya, and Italian
officials warned that Gaddafi’s fall could unleash
a major influx. Then-UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
António Guterres, meanwhile, stated
Libya was potentially expelling migrants to overwhelm
Europe.
After the NATO intervention and killing of
Gaddafi later that year, wartime displacement initially
subsided, but the collapse of central authority transformed
Libya into an even more important
transit hub. Rival governments, militias, and smuggling
networks built
increasingly organized and profitable routes across
Libya, allowing them to “extract political and financial
rents from their role as gatekeepers,” according to the
report on the securitization of migration.
Migrants
from Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, and elsewhere continue
to make the central Mediterranean one of Europe’s main
migration corridors. Efforts in early 2026 to disrupt some
of these networks simply
pushed routes to eastern Libya and onward to the Greek
island of Crete, demonstrating their
adaptability.
Turkey, meanwhile, came to understand
the same dynamic on Europe’s eastern flank. As the Syrian
civil war intensified in 2015, with European
countries among the outside powers intervening in the
conflict, millions of Syrians and other migrants sought to
reach Western Europe through the Balkans. Greece recorded
860,000 arrivals in 2015, mostly from Syria, along with
Afghanistan and Iraq, out of 1.3
million making their way to Europe.
Ankara
shouldered an enormous
humanitarian burden but increasingly recognized the
leverage created by its position. In 2016, the EU agreed
to provide Turkey with nearly $7 billion to support refugees
and curb migration to Europe. The situation flared up again
in 2020, after a Syrian airstrike killed 33 Turkish
soldiers in Idlib. Turkey briefly stopped preventing
migrants from moving toward Europe, prompting a surge at the
Greek border that ended after negotiations.
Turkish
President Recep Erdoğan has periodically threatened to
“open
the gates,” but Turkey is more interested in
extracting benefits without necessarily triggering another
mass movement. The Middle
East Forum has identified smuggling networks with
alleged ties to Turkish officials, suggesting that
authorities seem to tolerate parts of the lucrative trade
for financial gain.
Neither Libyan nor Turkish actors
created these migrant flows, but both have learned to
exploit them. European involvement in the conflicts in these
regions, meanwhile, has helped fuel the instability that
allowed these countries to emerge as transit
zones.
Manufacturing Migration Routes and the Next
Crisis
Having observed Europe’s vulnerabilities, Russia
and Belarus,
whose relations with the EU have plummeted in recent years,
began using migration as a tool of political
destabilization. By reducing travel costs and expediting
visas, they helped bring people from the Middle East and
Africa into their territory, and Russian and Belarusian
authorities further directed them toward European
borders.
Russia first tested the tactic in 2015
and 2016, sending thousands of migrants to its borders
with Finland and Norway. Belarus has adopted a similar
strategy since 2021,
encouraging migrants to cross toward Poland,
Latvia,
and Lithuania in response to EU sanctions. While these
countries have drastically upgraded border controls on their
frontiers with Belarus, Belarus has continued
to encourage migrants to cross. In 2023, Russia began
new efforts against Estonia
and Finland.
This
method is unlikely to overwhelm Europe numerically, but
highly publicized arrivals of non-European migrants lead to
the exploitation of existing political divisions. The
migration crisis has fueled
support for anti-establishment and far-right parties for
more than a decade in Europe, making even relatively modest
migration flows politically useful for Russia and
Belarus.
Russia also contributes to Europe’s
migration pressures by exacerbating conflicts beyond the
EU’s borders. “It’s always Putin who is involved in
those big migration movements. It’s always Vladimir
Putin,” EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner told
the Financial Times. The Russian president supported
former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad during the civil war
in 2011, which helped escalate Europe’s migration crisis
in 2015–2016.
Irregular migration to the EU has
fallen sharply in recent years, from 275,000 in 2023 to 31,000
between January and June 2026, based on figures provided by
the European Council. But they can surge suddenly, with
Morocco’s latest pressure on Ceuta demonstrating how
fragile Europe’s position remains. From the coercive
tactics of Morocco and Russia to the pressures created by
conflicts in Libya and Syria, Europe’s vulnerability to
outside powers has grown.
Migration also remains a
major source of tension between European states. Britain and
France have
argued over responsibility for migrants crossing the
English Channel, while Greece, Italy,
and other frontline states have periodically threatened to
loosen migrant controls and allow them to move further into
the EU. Central European governments, meanwhile, have
resisted EU efforts to distribute migrants more evenly
across the bloc.
The pressures are unlikely to
disappear. High youth
unemployment in countries like Morocco, Africa’s
rapidly growing population, and increasing climate
stress will continue to drive migration, even as
European countries appear
likely to continue with policies that have contributed
to instability beyond their borders.
For
governments’ position along Europe’s borders, the
temptation to exploit these flows is clear. Migration
provides political leverage and financial rewards against a
far wealthier political bloc. As Libya, Turkey, Morocco,
Russia, and Belarus demonstrate, controlling the migration
lever can extract serious concessions while imposing costs
on Europe.
But reducing migration to a geopolitical
weapon, a source of profit, or a problem to be passed from
one country to another undermines the people caught in it.
More than 100
people died in the Ceuta crossing, according to the
enclave’s leader, while Libya’s open
slave markets show the dangers facing migrants caught in
uncontrolled migration flows. Europe can strengthen its
borders, but migration will continue, and governments that
can control those movements will have a powerful source of
leverage.
By John P. Ruehl
Author
Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American
journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs
correspondent for the Independent
Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign
affairs publications, and his book, Budget
Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy
Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December
2022. Follow him on X
@john_ruehl.
This article was
produced by Economy
for All, a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
