GROSSETO, Italy — The Italo-Spanish clash on border controls is escalating.
Italy on Friday said it has no intention of suspending border checks on travelers from Spain, “a friendly country,” and rebuffed Madrid’s threats to retaliate if Rome maintains the emergency measures it instituted in response to the mass arrival of migrants in the Spanish exclave Ceuta last week.
“Italy does not accept ultimatums or demands from abroad regarding national security and border control,” the Office of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote in a statement.
Earlier in the day, the Spanish government had threatened to take “proportional measures” if Rome did not stop its reintroduced border checks and temporary suspension of the Schengen Agreement by Aug. 9.
In its statement, Rome said it would keep these controls in place “at least until August 15 and, in any case, until security and terrorism risks to Italy can be completely ruled out,” adding that a new “migratory wave” is expected in Ceuta on that date.
“Only when it is certain that there will be no security or terrorism risks for Italy, that there will be no new wave and that there are no irregular migrants heading toward European territory will it be possible to reconsider what has already been decided,” said the document.
BRUSSELS — EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner warned on Thursday the bloc is vulnerable to unauthorized migration if control of its external borders depends on the goodwill of neighboring countries.
Brunner’s remarks came at an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee, a week after a major migration surge from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, which has reignited debate over how the EU should secure its frontiers.
“What we have seen in Ceuta during the past few days was … a test of our resilience and also of the security of our external borders,” Brunner said.
“We must cooperate with our neighbors, of course. But as long as control depends on the goodwill of one neighboring state, we remain … vulnerable,” he added.
Brunner described last week’s events in Ceuta, when around 72,000 migrants forced their way into the Spanish exclave, as “solid proof that we need a strong and effective tool — and different tools — to combat smuggling.”
Ceuta Mayor-President Juan Jesús Vivas, who also attended the meeting, saidthat around 100 people died during the mass border crossing, and that between 3,000 and 5,000 remained in the exclave.
Brunner said the EU should use all available leverage to secure the cooperation of countries bordering the bloc.
“It’s about further strengthening the work with partners … [We need to] step up our migration diplomacy by reinforcing comprehensive partnerships to stem this illegal migration, secure effective returns and create the right opportunities for people at home,” he said.
Brunner said cooperation with non-EU countries was essential “because the goal there is to make sure such events never happen again.”
The conservative Austrian commissioner’s party colleague Integration Minister Claudia Bauer warned on Thursday in a written statement that “another attempted mass crossing” in Ceuta could happen on Aug. 15, quoting Spanish media.
“In light of reports of another attempted mass crossing, Spain must immediately and significantly reinforce border protection in its African enclaves and ensure that this time it will hold,” she said.
The United States on Thursday moved to allay fears that it was questioning Spain’s sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, but criticized Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government for its “refusal” to defend the North African exclaves from a “migrant invasion.”
Amid the crisis, Spanish politicians and media raised concerns about the warming relationship between Morocco — which claims Ceuta and Melilla — and the U.S. President Donald Trump, who was infuriated by Socialist Sánchez’s refusal to back the war in Iran.
Many in Madrid expressed fears Washington could decline to rein in Rabat, and pointed to a recent U.S. Congress report that described Ceuta and Melilla as being in “Moroccan territory” and was supportive of negotiations on the “future status” of the cities. But U.S. State Department Spokesperson Tommy Pigott insisted that there has been no change in U.S. policy on the exclaves.
“The United States unequivocally supports Spain’s sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla,” he told POLITICO.
The State Department noted that the congressional report did not represent U.S. law.
Pigott said that allegations suggesting Washington was questioning Spain’s continued control of the cities had been “pushed by nefarious actors who wish to distract from the Spanish government’s shameful refusal to defend its people from the migrant invasion of its territory in Ceuta.”
He also argued the Spanish government was solely to blame for the crisis in the exclave, into which 72,000 unauthorized migrants surged last week.
“The invasion of tens of thousands of migrants into Ceuta is a direct consequence of the Spanish government’s refusal to defend their sovereignty, secure their borders, and protect their people,” he said.
The crisis in Ceuta initially prompted widespread criticism from EU leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, who last week attacked Spain for having “completely failed to protect the Schengen Area’s external border from infiltration.”
Ceuta is not in the Schengen area, and is separated from mainland Spain by the Strait of Gibraltar.
While the EU member countries have since reversed course and praised Madrid for its handling of the situation, Pigott on Thursday called on Spain to “take all necessary actions to remove illegal migrants and regain control over its borders.”
“Unrestricted mass migration into Ceuta endangers the Spanish people and threatens the security of Europe,” he said. “The State Department stands with the Spanish people and all Europeans in defense of their sovereignty and welcomes all efforts to repel the invasion, remove illegal migrants from European territory, and secure Europe’s borders.”
Additional deaths involving Delaney Hall, a private immigration jail run by The GEO Group in Newark, New Jersey, has sparked renewed calls for the closure of the notorious 1,000 bed facility even as the Trump administration dramatically increases arrests and detentions across the nation.
On Saturday Aug. 1st, 41 year-old Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died while in custody. Multiple press reports and Lopez-Cornejo’s mother maintain that Lopez-Cornejo, a father of a 12-year-old girl, who suffered from chronic illness, died from medical neglect after he was refused treatment. He had been in the United States for 20 years and was taken into custody on his way to work.
In a statement shared with CNN, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that Lopez-Cornejo “experienced a medical emergency while in ICE custody,” and GEO Group staff “responded immediately and called 911 for emergency medical services.”
After the confirmation of Lopez-Cornejo’s death, Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) disclosed he had learned of a third death in late July in which the detainee experienced a seizure not long after arriving at Delaney Hall. According to Menendez’s account, GEO Group and ICE officials told him they called for EMS and the unidentified man was taken to University Hospital where he died. His name and additional details have yet to be disclosed.
Back in December 2025, 41 year-old Jean Wilson Brutus died while in custody in Delaney Hall. At that time, 30 people had died in ICE custody across the country that year.
Unlike the high profile violent confrontations witnessed in Minneapolis that sparked massive street protests and culminated in the murders of Renee Good and Alex Peretti, ICE is now utilizing non-law enforcement databases for programs like Medicare to target and apprehend thousands of people who are actually in this country legally. In fact, scores of American citizens have been abducted off the street and detained.
Since Delaney Hall re-opened as a private immigration prison at the start of the second Trump admin, grassroots groups like NJ Pax Christi and Eyes on Ice NJ have had a humanitarian witness at the site located next to the Essex County Correctional Facility in the Ironbound section of Newark.
At least 22 people have died in ICE custody in 2026, with close to four months still to go in this year.
Back on May 9, 2025 masked federal agents abducted Newark Mayor Ras Baraka off of a public street outside the private jail, only to release him later that day after a mass non-violent protest. While charges were dropped against Baraka, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice continues to prosecute Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) on charges related to that day that could result in a 17 year jail term. McIver, along with Rep. Robert Menendez Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), who were also on site at Delaney Hall that day, insist they were there only fulfilling their constitutionally-protected oversight duties.
The city of Newark has been pressing for The GEO Group to permit a fire inspection and obtain a certificate of occupancy for the sprawling private jail. Back in 2021, activists had successfully lobbied the state of New Jersey to prohibit municipal and county governments as well as private facilities from entering into new contracts with ICE to house immigration detainees.
Private jailers like The GEO Group successfully challenged the legislation in court. At the time, the Biden administration was holding more than 26,000 detainees nationwide at more than 120 sites. Multiple press reports indicate the Trump administration is now holding almost three times that number at over 450 facilities in all 50 states, Washington D.C. and in U.S. territories. In July, ICE reported it had arrested 51,000 people, the largest number in the Department of Homeland Security’s history, according to ABC News.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump pledged to target millions of U.S. residents and “deport them so rapidly” he would “rescue every town that had been invaded and conquered.” In that same campaign, Vice President JD Vance advanced an admittedly completely fabricated story about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio kidnapping and eating their neighbors’ domestic pets. The claim was so outrageous that local municipal officials and Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine spoke out on behalf of Springfield’s Haitian residents, who they said had filled jobs in the rust belt town that had actually helped revive the local economy.
At least 22 people have died in ICE custody in 2026, with close to four months still to go in this year. That does not include the multiple fatal shootings just since Trump was sworn in for the second time. According to the Guardian, last month’s fatal shooting of 52 year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was the 10th such fatal ICE shooting since Trump regained office.
In an interview with WBAI Pacifica Radio, Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-N.J.), who has been in Congress for less than three months, recounted that in her multiple visits to Delaney Hall “what was clear was that there were individuals being detained with chronic health conditions that were not receiving the kind of care that is necessary and mandated by their doctors.”
Lack of access to timely medical care has been a long standing and well-documented complaint throughout the ICE system and private contract immigration prisons across the nation.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall. Under the GEO Group business model, detainees maintain the private jail for a dollar a day. Earlier this summer, large crowds of protestors converged on Delaney Hall in support of the hunger strikers.
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) ICE agents stand guard in front of protesters outside Delaney Hall which is being used as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center on May 26, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey.
While New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has been a vocal opponent of the private jail and was turned away when she initially came for a visit, she did call out the New Jersey State Police at the height of street protests outside Delaney in solidarity with the hunger strikers.
The move marked a significant escalation and came after the Trump administration threatened to suspend the processing of international flights at Newark Liberty International on the eve of the World Cup, in which New Jersey had invested heavily.
Henry Craver, writing for the American Friends Service Committee, described GEO and ICE’s repressive and violent response to the show of solidarity for the hunger strike.
“In one incident guards tried to remove a strike leader soon after the strike began,” Carver wrote. “When other detained people formed a human shield around him, armed officers returned in force. They swept through multiple units, physically assaulted people, and deployed tear gas. People in those units told AFSC that they struggled to breathe for hours after.”
Carver continued: “The retaliation escalated in the following weeks. Hundreds of detained people have been transferred out of Delaney Hall to facilities in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Pennsylvania — far away from their families and communities.”
With a Republican Congress very much under the control of Trump, efforts at oversight of ICE and the private prison system that has expanded significantly has been left to the Democrats, who are in the minority. Grassroots efforts at the municipal level have been far more effective in galvanizing resistance to the creation of new immigration prisons.
State lawmakers also have a mixed record when it comes to reigning in ICE’s mass deportation strategy. A federal judge recently struck down New York State’s legislation to prohibit federal agents from wearing masks while letting stand a provision that prohibits town and county governments from entering into so-called 287(g) partnership that deputizes local police to enforce immigration laws.
“I need to say that every single American should be paying attention to what’s happening here — our government is treating a set of people with such impunity, with such inhumanity it is costing them their lives,” Mejia said. “Now we can debate our positions on immigration and immigration reform but I think it is fair to say that essentially sentencing people to death is not what the American people are calling for or want.”
Mejia continued: “It is imperative that at least the state of New Jersey is pushing hard to make sure that our state officials have full and unrestricted access to these detention centers to ensure the well being of these individuals. These are human beings.”
Trump has repeatedly described undocumented immigrants as “animals,” “illegal monsters” and “gang members” staging “the largest invasion in the history of our country.”
These claims, which have been the way the Fox media complex frames the immigration, are easily debunked by study after study that found immigration into the U.S. is actually associated with lower crime rates.
Working at the European Commission is one of the most coveted civil service jobs in Brussels. Yet, officials employed there describe high pressure, bureaucracy and burnout.
Our colleague Seb Starcevic has interviewed dozen officials from different commissioners’ cabinets and directorates-general, varying in age, nationality and seniority. On the podcast, Zoya Sheftalovich and Sarah Wheaton parse through what these insiders had to say about their working conditions.
Next, last week’s Ceuta crisis — when a surge of migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave — has revived a basic question: Why does Spain still hold territory in North Africa? With Madrid increasingly isolated from both U.S. and European allies, doubts are also growing over who would support Spain if Morocco moved against Ceuta or its other North African city, Melilla.
Plus: Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharma company of Ozempic fame, is launching a pill version of its weight-loss drug Wegovy in Europe … and transatlantic tensions are already brewing.
Questions? Comments? Get in touch! You can message us or send a voice message to our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
PARIS — The United States is dragging its feet on approving President Emmanuel Macron’s pick for French ambassador to Washington amid a spat over human rights at the United Nations, according to three people familiar with the dispute.
Macron may have charmed U.S. President Donald Trump with pleasantries and fine dining at Versailles Palace during his June visit to France, but the delay in approving the new envoy reveals that diplomatic tensions between the two countries are still simmering.
Aurélien Lechevallier, a longtime Macron ally, was expected to take office next month but his posting is yet to be approved by the U.S. Department of State — a process that is usually a formality between allied countries.
According to two people familiar with the matter, the Trump administration took offense at a social media post from France’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva that criticized Washington’s decision to side with Russia and North Korea against the renewal of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk’s mandate.
“The United States is very disappointed in the irresponsible and disrespectful rhetoric from the French,” said an official from the Department of State in response to a written question about Lechevallier’s clearance process. “We are responding appropriately to their comments.”
Türk, an Austrian national who has been high commissioner since 2022, has drawn U.S. ire for his criticism of the country’s immigration policy and Israel’s war in Gaza.
Two of the individuals also expressed hope that the dispute, which was first reported by Reuters, would blow over and Washington would not block Lechevallier’s appointment.
Love-hate relationship
The spat illustrates the volatile relationship between the U.S. and its oldest ally France. While Macron and Trump have shared moments of camaraderie in front of the cameras, they have polar opposite world views and regularly spar over NATO, Ukraine and trade relations.
Trump’s participation in the June G7 summit in Evian was praised as a high point in the relationship, with the U.S. president showing signs of support for Ukraine and prolonging his visit to France to join Macron and his wife for dinner at the gilded Versailles Palace.
“We have our ups and downs in our relationship with the U.S.,” said a former French official, who has kept informed of the transatlantic relationship. Macron is capable of challenging America’s bullying at the Economic Forum of Davos, but “can also hug President Trump and invite him to sign his Iran deal in Versailles.”
The hold-up in Lechevallier’s approval process will end up being “an anecdote,” said the former official, who, like others quoted here, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “But it confirms we are not afraid of a confrontation” with Washington, they added.
For a senior figure from Macron’s Renaissance party, however, the U.S. targeting a senior French diplomat is “staggering.” Lechevallier is currently chief of staff to Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and was Macron’s classmate at the elite ENA graduate school.
“We’ve been extremely cooperative, even considerate, on Iran … We’ve been polite and diplomatic. And we’re faced with something that is a bit humiliating,” said the official.
Diplomatic tensions
The French foreign ministry declined to comment on Lechevallier’s stalled approval procedure and has not protested publicly. But Paris has not rowed back its criticism of the U.S. human rights record either.
“Our position was known. We supported the renewal of the high commissioner’s mandate,” said a French diplomat. “Differences of opinion over a [U.N.] vote do not call into question the strength of our relationship or our ability to work together.” Last month, the U.S. voted against the renewal of Türk’s term, accusing him of leading the U.N. human rights system “to its deathbed.”
Despite the personal relationship between Trump and Macron, the dispute comes at a time of simmering diplomatic tensions with the U.S. Barrot has sharply criticized Washington over its military intervention in Venezuela, as well as its threats against Greenland. He also vowed France would never give in to U.S. “blackmail” over trade tariffs.
Relations with U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner have also soured over his perceived lecturing on the fight against antisemitism in France and his alleged interference in French political life. Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared, was twice summoned to the foreign ministry.
“Kushner had problems [with the French foreign ministry] … He was humiliated. Maybe this is also payback,” said the former French diplomat.
The news came the way it always comes in my family, sideways, through a phone. I was in my living room, sunk into the chaise lounge I retreat to, comfortable in a way that now embarrasses me, when I heard my mother’s voice in the other room calling my father. Something in her tone. You learn your parents’ registers the way you learn weather, and this was the register of bad news from far away.
Greece was burning again. Crete worst of all, in the south, where a fire near Rethymno had driven some 8,000 people from their homes in a single night. Fires on Paros and Andros, scattered across the Aegean. And then the name I had been bracing against: Lesbos. A blaze near Plomari, the old ouzo town on the island’s south coast, was eating coastal homes while roughly 100 firefighters fought it, and a seaside resort emptied into the dark.
The fires are not a freak event, and no one in Greece pretends they are. They began in early July and have barely paused since; this is the second week of a major outbreak, dozens of fronts at once, fed by a record European heat wave, a spring of too little rain and the Meltemi, the dry seasonal winds that come screaming down the Aegean in July and August at up to 100 kilometers an hour and turn a spark into a wall. Scientists have said it plainly: Climate change is loading the dice, the Mediterranean’s pine and olive and dry scrub catch faster and burn hotter than they used to, and summers like this one are becoming the rule, not the exception. Greece has always burned in August. It has not always burned like this.
My father is from Lesbos. My mother’s people are from there too, further back, so the island runs down both sides of me like a watermark you only see when the light hits it right. It is where my family’s houses stand, where a portion of my life is already promised, where I know I will one day go to live for a while, because the pull has never once loosened. It is, if I am honest, where I come from in the deepest sense, not only the blood but the making. My love of poetry, my hunger for art — I trace all of it back to that island, to Sappho, who sang there 26 centuries ago and somehow reached a Greek-American boy in Pennsylvania and told him what he was.
I have not set foot on Lesbos in 10 years.
That is the sentence, the amount of time, I keep circling. Now I watch it burn on a screen from a soft chair, an ocean and a lifetime away, useless.
There is a particular helplessness to diaspora I have never quite found the words for, though I keep trying. You love a place you are not in. You grieve a fire you cannot smell.
There is a particular helplessness to diaspora I have never quite found the words for, though I keep trying. You love a place you are not in. You grieve a fire you cannot smell. You refresh a feed for news of a village whose name your relatives say with their whole mouths and you say with an accent that gives you away. The distance is not only miles. It is the knowledge that everyone there is living what you are merely watching, and that watching, from comfort, is its own small shame.
I was made by that island’s water. They tell me that as a baby, I would not leave the sea. I would stay in the Aegean until I cried at being carried out, submerging myself again and again until, the family story goes, I matched the sea, my skin gone the temperature of it, indistinguishable, a small animal that had already decided where it belonged. Even now, when I step into that water, something in me resets. The sun on it, the salt, the particular blue no postcard has ever gotten right — it reconnects me to my own being, returns me to whatever I was before the world got complicated.
There was a year, when I was barely one, that the island nearly kept me for good: a lost passport, a wary government that took an American baby for a Greek one, and a U.S. congressman who finally untangled it and got me home. It is a longer story than this essay can hold, but its shape has never left me. The point is this: That island has been trying to keep me since before I could speak, and I have spent a decade letting the ocean between us win.
And here is the thing I cannot hold simply, what kept me on the chaise longer than the news required. That same sea that baptized me is, for thousands of others, a grave.
Lesbos is not only my father’s Eden. For more than a decade it has been a frontline, the first Greek soil that exhausted, terrified people touch when they cross from Turkey in boats that were never built for open water. My sacred water is someone else’s last water. My homeland is a stranger’s checkpoint and, if they are lucky, their refuge.
I don’t know how to make those facts, that awful juxtaposition, clean, and I have stopped trying. Both experiences are true. The island is sacred to me for what it gave me, and it is sacred to the fleeing for what it offers them, which is the oldest thing land can offer: safety, ground, a place to stop running.
When the fires come, they do not check anyone’s passport. They take the olive groves and the goats and the summer houses, and they take the makeshift shelters and the fragile new footing of people who had already lost everything once. In Crete, the deadliest front this week, three firefighters have already died trying to hold the line against the blaze. That is what steadies me and breaks me in the same breath, that a land this rich in what it gives, in shade and figs and refuge and myth, keeps burning while the world half-watches.
A Mediterranean summer on fire has become a genre now, a seasonal rerun we thumb past on the way to something else. This year’s footage looks like last year’s, and that of the year before, a sameness that is its own quiet violence. Repetition sands horror down into wallpaper. But it is not wallpaper to the family loading a car in the dark, or to a firefighter’s widow, or to a man in Pennsylvania watching his one island go up in flames on a screen. Familiar is not the same as bearable.
What the fire has done, strangely, is make me want to go back not to take but to give. To help. To stand on the ground instead of scrolling past it. I have spent ten years loving Lesbos as an inheritance, a thing I own from a distance, and the smoke on my screen has shamed that love into something more useful. My mother’s ancestors and my father’s boyhood and Sappho’s fragments and the sea that raised me are all still there, waiting, under a sky the color of alarm. My uncle is in Athens. My family’s houses are still standing, for now. And I am here, finally understanding that loving a place from afar is not the same as loving it.
I think I will go to Lesbos this year. Not because the fire is out, but because it isn’t. The sea is still there. It is still the color no one can name. And it is still, for me and for the strangers arriving on its shore, the difference between drowning and being born.
The ease with which tens of thousands of migrants penetrated the border has ramped up a sense of vulnerability to hybrid attack. And that alarm has only been amplified by a fear that traditional NATO allies in the U.S. and the EU are no longer fully dependable because of their political feuds with Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Buoyed by an increasingly warm relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, Rabat is seizing the moment and doubling down on its claims to Ceuta and Melilla, which it sees as occupied territory, in Morocco’s state-aligned press.
But, more alarmingly for Madrid, that argument is no longer coming exclusively from Rabat. Questions over Spain’s centuries-old control of the fortress cities have also been raised in a U.S. Congress report, and by Israel’s ambassador to the U.N.
It is a sign of the level of concern in Madrid that the government is now having to make public declarations on a point of international law that — only a week ago — it would have thought was self evident.
“Ceuta and Melilla are not to be touched,” Defense Minister Margarita Robles said during a press conference on Monday. “Everyone must be very clear that Spanish territorial integrity and sovereignty are not up for debate.”
The government’s rejection of Morocco’s claims has done little to reduce worries in Spain over what would happen if Rabat dials up the pressure. This week, national newspapers have been filled with columns expressing fears of a “Green March 2.0” — pointing out the parallels with Morocco’s use of a mass popular mobilization to take over the province of Spanish Sahara in 1975.
José Manuel García-Margallo, who served as Spain’s foreign minister between 2011 and 2014 and is a member of the center-right People’s Party, said it was vital for Spain to show its control over the cities is not negotiable.
“Do you think the British would have allowed 60,000 Spaniards to enter Gibraltar?” he asked. “I’d encourage this government to be a little bit more British.”
“We should aim to be friends with Morocco,” he added. “But it’s important to ensure that even your friends understand that there are red lines that simply cannot be crossed.”
Imperial legacies
Ceuta and Melilla are among the few remaining vestiges of the vast Spanish Empire. They have been under Madrid’s rule since 1668 and 1497, respectively, and are fully-integrated parts of Spain — and the European Union.
But since gaining independence from France in 1956, Morocco has consistently claimed sovereignty over both settlements, which it characterizes as “colonies” that are “occupied” by Spain. And those territorial aspirations have been underscored in the country’s largely state-aligned press following last week’s events.
Migrants receive water on the beach next to the CETI (Centros de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes) in Ceuta on Aug. 2, 2026. | Adri Salido/Getty Images
“The central question is no longer whether these cities will be reintegrated into their natural environment, Morocco, but how long it will take and how many human tragedies will have to be endured in the meantime,” wrote Le360, a publication considered close to the Moroccan royal household.
Morocco’s claims on Ceuta and Melilla have lately been boosted by Rabat’s international allies — among them, a prominent Republican politician in the U.S.
In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Español in April, U.S. Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart, who serves on the powerful Committee on Appropriations, stated “Ceuta and Melilla are in Moroccan territory” and questioned whether the autonomous cities “are part of Spain or should be part of Morocco.”
He also noted that while Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez was “jeopardizing” the alliance between the U.S. and Spain by opposing the war in Iran, Rabat had been Washington’s steadfast ally.
Weeks later, as U.S. lawmakers prepared an appropriations bill that included a proposal to allocate $40 million to Morocco for defense and security expenditures, Díaz-Balart submitted a congressional report noting “the Spanish-administered cities of Ceuta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.”
The document additionally expressed support for “diplomatic engagement” on “the future status” of the autonomous cities.
Speaking to POLITICO, Díaz-Balart denied the congressional report had been intended to signal a major shift on Ceuta and Melilla.
“It’s been an issue of dispute for some time. Morocco has been a strong ally of the United States — it was the first country to recognize the United States. And we’ve had good ties with Spain over the years. All we were asking is for Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio to keep an eye on this and be sure that both sides are talking about this issue,” he said.
But the congressman’s willingness to give a platform to Rabat’s claims on Ceuta and Melilla reflects how close Morocco and the United States have become since 2020. That year, Trump took the landmark step of recognizing Rabat’s claim to the disputed territory of Western Sahara in exchange for the normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel.
Last week, Trump reaffirmed that recognition in a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Rabat at the same moment as the migrants surged into Ceuta. Rabat showed its pleasure with this decision by announcing that it had renamed a major highway after the president.
Adding to Spain’s concerns about its territories in North Africa, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon reacted to the images of last week’s migrant influx by hitting back against Madrid’s criticism of the war in Gaza and challenging Spain’s presence in Ceuta and Melilla.
A February 2024 image showing the fences and wall marking the border between Morocco and Spain’s North African Melilla exclave. | Oscar Del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images
“Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa,” he wrote on X.
Israel’s head of mission in Madrid, Dana Erlich, later clarified that Danon’s comments did not represent an official position.
García-Margallo said the problems with Díaz-Balart and Danon were a consequence of Sánchez’s foreign policy.
“I’m also not surprised that those claims are being amplified in other parts of the globe … The current government’s relations with the Trump administration and with the government of Israel have deteriorated tremendously in recent times,” he said. “When you make a point of showing you’re against specific countries, consequences are to be expected.”
The specter of the ‘Green March’
For Spaniards, the idea that Morocco could engineer a situation to annex territory is far from theoretical speculation. Many still remember Morocco’s 1975 “Green March,” an operation that forced the handover of Spanish Sahara.
“Rabat deployed tens of thousands of civilians to overwhelm border posts in Spanish Sahara in 1975 as dictator Francisco Franco lay dying,” said José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez, history professor at Madrid’s Rey Juan Carlos University and author of a book on the fall of Spanish Sahara.
“At the time, it wasn’t clear who was running — or would run — Spain, and Morocco took advantage of the weakness of the Spanish state to take over the province,” he said.
As former Foreign Minister García-Margallo put it: “I don’t have the slightest doubt that the current government’s weakness has contributed to this crisis.”
Historian Rodríguez Jiménez said Rabat had sporadically tested Madrid’s willingness to defend its territories in northern Africa.
In 2002, a squad of Moroccan marines launched an “invasion” of Perejil Island, an uninhabited Spanish islet off the coast of Ceuta, sparking a week-long crisis that only concluded when Spanish special forces were deployed to evict them.
And in a strikingly similar incident to last week’s massive influx of migrants into Ceuta, in 2021 some 8,000 people surged into the autonomous city after Morocco abruptly withdrew its gendarmes from the border.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska at a press conference called in response to the recent influx of migrants into Ceuta on Aug. 1, 2026. | Adri Salido/Getty Images
Rodríguez Jiménez argued Sánchez had blundered by responding to that incident by reversing Spain’s historic support of Western Sahara’s self-determination and accepting Morocco’s bid to control the disputed territory.
“The government opted to placate Rabat, failing to understand that this was seen as a sign of weakness in Morocco, a country which is not our friend, and which has every interest in exploiting our vulnerabilities,” he said.
“What happened last week was a dress rehearsal for an eventual invasion,” he added. “And Rabat has noted Madrid’s complete inability to repulse that attack.”
Spanishness ‘beyond all doubt’
Spanish officials reject the accusation that the Ceuta crisis has made Madrid look weak, with Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska on Tuesday insisting the crisis showed the country to be a “strong” and respected regional player.
That ability to project strength to Rabat is increasingly important as NATO’s commitment to defending Ceuta and Melilla appears less certain than it once did. Back in 2022, then-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg specifically listed the North African cities as falling under the alliance’s aegis.
But things have changed since then. Trump has cast doubt on NATO’s commitment to common defense and his relationship with Spain, which he has repeatedly lambasted for its lackluster defense spending and failure to support the Iran war, is particularly rocky.
When asked about NATO’s position now, an official said: “We don’t speculate on hypothetical scenarios,” while adding the alliance was “ready and well-postured to protect and defend all allies.”
García-Margallo said that NATO’s common defense commitment is only as strong as “our allies’ willingness to support us … the interpretation of the terms of any treaty is ultimately a political decision.”
POLITICO asked the Spanish foreign ministry what measures the government had taken to address concerns about the international conversation over Ceuta and Melilla, especially in relation to Díaz-Balart’s congressional report.
The ministry did not answer the questions directly, but hit back at any assertion that the cities’ sovereignty could be negotiable.
“The Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla is beyond all doubt and is recognized as such by international law and the entire world,” a spokesperson said.
Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed reporting from Washington. Victor Jack contributed reporting from Brussels.
French and British authorities rescued more than 150 migrants from a distressed boat crossing the English Channel Tuesday after the vessel’s engine caught fire.
The incident came less than a day after U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham vowed his government would be “relentless” in curbing small-boat crossings.
The vessel left France on Monday night. During the overnight crossing, five people accepted assistance from French rescue crews, but the remaining passengers refused and continued toward Britain.
On Tuesday morning, French maritime authorities said in a statement that the boat’s engine “caught fire” and its structure “deteriorated very rapidly,” triggering an immediate mayday call.
All 157 people on board were brought to safety and returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer in France.
The French maritime prefecture added that when migrants are “determined to reach the United Kingdom” they often refuse assistance and accept it only in “situations of extreme urgency.” No deaths were reported.
The incident “underlines the terrible dangers of small boat crossings,” a U.K. government spokesperson said in a statement seen by POLITICO on Tuesday. Britain will “continue to work relentlessly with the French and our partners overseas to prevent these perilous journeys,” the spokesperson added.
Burnham visited Dover on Monday, saying his two-week-old government was already making progress in tackling irregular migration. “People want to see this issue addressed,” he said, pointing to a doubling of enforcement officers targeting smuggling gangs on both sides of the Channel. But he also called for “a system that offers safe routes for people.” More than 2,000 migrants have reached Britain by small boat since Burnham entered Downing Street.
The rescue came as migration climbed back to the top of Europe’s political agenda following the arrival of 72,000 people in Ceuta last week. After days of governments trading blame, EU interior ministers closed ranks behind Spain at an emergency meeting Tuesday, insisting the Schengen zone had never been at risk and calling for closer coordination in responding to future border crises.
BRUSSELS — EU interior ministers sought to draw a line under five days of bitter recriminations over the arrival of 72,000 migrants in Ceuta, closing ranks behind Spain and accusing smugglers and foreign actors of exploiting the crisis to divide the bloc.
The show of solidarity marked a sharp shift after EU leaders publicly blamed Madrid’s migration policies for creating a crisis they warned could spill across Europe, prompting Italy to suspend air and sea links with Spain.
Following a three-hour emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, ministers praised Spain’s response, stressed that the passport-free Schengen zone had never been at risk and called for tighter coordination among capitals during future migration emergencies.
The meeting followed days of unusually public anger at Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. In a letter signed by 22 EU leaders, governments demanded tougher action to stop irregular arrivals, while Italy suspended air and sea transit with Spain over fears that migrants could move onward through the Schengen area. Sánchez hit back by urging his counterparts to show “understanding” rather than turn Spain into a scapegoat for a crisis on the EU’s external border.
By Tuesday, ministers were keen to close ranks. The EU’s Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said the influx had been “instrumentalized” by smugglers and human traffickers, while French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said ministers had condemned efforts to use images of the crossings to divide the bloc.
“The divisions that we have heard over the weekend were not welcome and they were exploited by foreign countries,” Nuñez told reporters. “But what I heard this morning reassured me.”
EU countries that had publicly called out Spain over its migration policies took a more conciliatory tone in the meeting, apparently appeased by the speed and effectiveness of Madrid’s response to the crisis, three EU diplomats with knowledge of the meeting said. They were granted anonymity to discuss the confidential talks.
Matteo Piantedosi, Italy’s interior minister, praised Spain’s efforts to control the unrest, the diplomats said. Rome clashed with Madrid on Friday, calling for Spain to be kicked out of the Schengen zone.
Another diplomat referred to the past 24 hours of diplomacy as EU “couples counseling.”
Brunner declined to speculate about whether Morocco had played a role in the influx. The question is sensitive because Spain relies heavily on Rabat to police departures toward Ceuta, and the episode revived memories of 2021, when thousands entered the exclave after Moroccan forces relaxed controls during a diplomatic dispute with Madrid.
Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska instead praised Morocco’s cooperation in bringing the latest crisis under control and described Tuesday’s meeting as “entirely constructive.”
He said 70,000 of the 72,000 people who entered Ceuta had since returned to Morocco and insisted the Schengen area had never been at risk. Ceuta has special arrangements requiring travelers to show documentation before continuing to mainland Europe.
Grande-Marlaska also called Italy’s transport restrictions unjustified and said he expected them to be lifted. He rejected suggestions that the crisis had made Spain look weak.
“Spain has come out looking like a strong, reliable partner,” he said. “This isn’t a matter that depends on testosterone.”
Ministers also called for better early-warning systems, closer coordination between capitals and stronger cooperation with non-EU countries to prevent departures.
Several pressed for faster work on so-called return hubs outside the bloc. Greece proposed an EU mechanism allowing asylum procedures to be suspended and migrants returned immediately in extreme circumstances, according to a Greek government official.
“The EU’s external borders are our shared responsibility, and migration requires a united European response,” said Ireland’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan, who chaired the meeting.
The Commission is expected to consider further measures in September after examining what caused the influx and whether social media helped organize or amplify it. Strengthening the role of the EU border agency Frontex is among the options under discussion.
Max Griera and Nektaria Stamouli contributed to this report. This article has been updated.
LONDON — Two of Britain’s leading right-wing politicians are stuck in a will-they-won’t-they tussle — and it could have big implications for the next general election.
Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe have spent the week flirting with, retreating from … and then once again talking up a rapprochement between their two parties, Farage’s Reform UK and Lowe’s Restore Britain.
It comes after months of bitter briefing against Farage by Lowe, whose hard-right party — while still polling in single digits — has eaten into support for Farage’s much larger right-wing force.
POLITICO recaps the saga — and tries to map out what it could mean for the wider British right.
Who are the key players?
Farage has been a dominant figure in British politics for many years. He was originally leader of the Euroskeptic UKIP, then the Brexit Party, and now Reform UK after a comeback at the 2024 general election. That election delivered five Reform MPs, including Farage … and Rupert Lowe himself.
Best known to some for a tumultuous stint as chair of Southampton Football Club, the multimillionaire Lowe briefly joined Farage in the European Parliament in 2019 as a Brexit Party MEP. He unsuccessfully stood for Reform in a 2024 by-election, but the pair were reunited after the general election when Lowe won the coastal seat of Great Yarmouth.
Why did they fall out?
It’s complicated. On the surface, it’s a policy split, but there’s plenty of personal bad blood too.
Farage has always taken a hardline approach to immigration — but some of Lowe’s stated positions went too far even for him. The Great Yarmouth MP publicly backed the deportation of families of people convicted of child grooming, a move the Reform UK leader rejected. Lowe said he had been “silenced” by the party.
Then Elon Musk weighed in. In January last year, the tech tycoon used his platform to lay into Farage, saying he was no longer the right person for the job — and giving his backing to Lowe. Lowe is a hit on the Musk-owned social platform X, where his lengthy posts have topped up his earnings.
The pair’s mutual loathing only seemed to escalate.
Lowe sat as an independent MP in the House of Commons, before setting up Restore Britain as a cross-party group, publishing policy papers on mass deportations and holding its own inquiry into the emotive issue of grooming gangs.
It became a full-blown party this February, capitalizing on the Great Yarmouth MP’s growing X following.
What’s that meant for Farage?
The Reform UK leader, who has a well-established history of falling out with one-time allies, initially kept his distance from Lowe, claiming the hard-right party’s following is minimal.
However, Lowe’s movement has already proven effective at splitting the already fragmented right-wing vote. The Great Yarmouth First party, an affiliate of Restore, picked up nine seats at May’s local elections and denied Reform a majority on Norfolk County Council, although Reform still made huge gains nationally.
At the Makerfield by-election, which Labour’s Andy Burnham won shortly before becoming British prime minister, Restore Britain bagged 6.8 percent to Reform’s 34.5 percent. Even though their combined totals wouldn’t have beaten Burnham, Farage lambasted the result, asking Restore voters: “What do you want?”
A similar pattern emerged at last week’s Greater Manchester mayoral by-election to succeed Burnham, where Restore picked up 8.7 percent of first preference votes.
What’s the latest on a rapprochement?
After the Greater Manchester contest, Lowe shot a 12-minute X video calling for the two men to put “personal differences aside” to deliver credible change. Lowe’s monologue had five conditions. They included a referendum on the death penalty, banning halal and kosher meat, and preventing former ministers from the center-right Conservatives who’ve defected to Reform from having a role in a future Farage government.
The following day, Farage claimed he had reached out to Lowe but had received no reply. Lowe then denied this and accused Farage of “outright lying about our private conversations” — even publishing a purported WhatsApp message from the Reform UK boss.
Farage told Times Radio those claims were “extraordinary” and that Lowe is “not a very easy person to deal with.” But he insisted he has a willingness to “put past differences aside in the interest of getting some sort of unity” … which suggests the pair might come to the table.
What does this mean for the Tories?
There’s another layer of intrigue to this row, too.
The Conservatives — who were running Britain until a spectacular general election defeat in 2024 — have ruled out any arrangement with Farage’s Reform UK, decrying the party’s economic policies and questioning Farage’s financial affairs.
But they have sounded much more conciliatory towards Lowe.
The party gave him one of its seats on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinizes government spending. Party Leader Kemi Badenoch even praised Lowe as someone who “turns up to work. Nigel Farage doesn’t.”
Those answers suggest that placating Lowe — and his huge online following — is no longer seen as bad politics for Britain’s two big right-wing parties.
On July 26 in Pennsylvania, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries introduced the party’s Fighting for an Affordable America agenda to mark 100 days until November’s midterm elections. The plan, according to the Associated Press, calls for “restoring healthcare cuts, bringing the cost of living down and ending the war in Iran to beat Republicans and hold President Donald Trump accountable.”
Democrats always want to run on kitchen table issues, and this time they have an opening you could drive the Titanic through. Even among Trump’s most fervent followers, the war in Iran is unusually unpopular; it’s the first time I can ever remember Republicans not rallying around a war started by a GOP president. In fact, the party used to rally around so-called “Democrat wars” too, at least most of the time, even as they condemned them for being mistakes. Trump, though, seems to have broken that knee-jerk reaction, which, if it lasts, may end up being one of the only things he has done right, even if it was by accident.
After Trump and the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, there are no Democrats — and vanishingly few independents — who are clamoring for a “return to normal,” if anyone can even remember what that looks like.
“Holding Donald Trump accountable” is obviously a necessary goal, and we can only hope that if they take back the House, and perhaps the Senate, Democrats will spend the next two years hammering Republicans on corruption, malfeasance, criminality and incompetence, pounding as many nails into the MAGA coffin as possible in anticipation of a hard-fought 2028 campaign. After Trump and the GOP’s anti-democracy turn, there are no Democrats — and vanishingly few independents — who are clamoring for a “return to normal,” if anyone can even remember what that looks like.
As we get further into Trump’s second term, the rise of the progressive left, generated at least in part by the desperate need for generational change, is bringing some longstanding issues to the surface. Younger Democrats aren’t talking about politics in technocratic terms, as the party’s politicians have been doing for the last 30 years, offering up 10-point economic plans and telling the public how they can work the system more efficiently. They see politics in largely moral terms, and they are ready to address some of the thorniest moral issues we face.
Oligarchy is at the top of the list, an issue that has animated the left since at least the Occupy Wall Street movement began in 2011. Fifteen years later, a global backlash against billionaires who have outsize influence over politics — and who do not pay their fair share — is taking shape.
The left also rejects America’s global role as security guarantor, particularly in light of the tragedy taking place in Gaza, which has been aided and abetted by the U.S. government. The party’s mainstream has moved substantially in their direction, leading to an unprecedented split in the House caucus in July that saw over a hundred House members vote to cut off aid to Israel. Whether it was done out of genuine desire to end the blank check or simply to allow members a symbolic vote going into the midterms, it’s clear that the intense opposition to Israel’s actions have made a difference, despite the ongoing debate about the scope of the policy.
These moral issues are animating a significant faction of the party, and they are having an impact. But I find myself wondering why another moral issue, much closer to home and shocking almost beyond comprehension, isn’t getting much play on the campaign trail.
The treatment of immigrants of all statuses, and sometimes American citizens who happen to look “foreign,” is an abomination. But aside from perfunctory nods to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it seems to have become background noise.
Masked federal agents are killing people with impunity. They are splitting up families without compunction, throwing people in camps and deporting them to countries they have never even visited. Now, with the permission of the MAGA-compliant Supreme Court, the Trump administration is in the process of deporting Haitians who have been here legally for decades by forcing them to leave immediately or wear an ankle bracelet in anticipation of being sent to a country which our own State Department says is too dangerous to visit. These are people who own property and businesses, and many of them have American-born children. They also happen to be Black.
This is not a popular policy. While most congressional Republicans still approve of Trump’s immigration agenda, many of them aren’t thrilled with the administration’s deportation policy. According to Strength in Numbers, most Americans are appalled and prefer a path to citizenship for non-criminals. Trump’s cruel priorities clearly work for many rank-and-file Republicans, and this seems to have some timorous Democrats spooked. But if there has ever been an issue that the left should be screaming about every single day, it’s this.
Many Americans are out in the streets protesting and putting themselves on the line. In fact, average voters may be more up in arms than Democratic politicians. If the progressive left wants to consolidate the party behind a more virtuous set of values, this is the issue that will rally the entire spectrum of ideologies. Jeffries and party leaders should move it to the very top of the agenda, and make Trump’s abuses a rallying cry across the country.
The Democratic Party should not play politics with this; the president’s abuses are happening right here on our own streets, in our own communities. It is the moral issue of our time.
Home affairs ministers are meeting this morning as the fallout of the Ceuta crisis continues to roil Europe.
Last week’s sudden influx of migrants into the Spanish exclave — most of whom have since returned — sparked heated exchanges between European leaders. On the show, hosts Zoya Sheftalovich and Ian Wishart preview whether today’s emergency meeting can cool tensions, and what measures the Commission may propose to address concerns across the bloc.
Next, a drought in Hungary and Romania could grind nuclear power plants to a halt since the River Danube has fallen too low to cool their reactors. Budapest and Bucharest are on high alert over the risk of an energy crisis in the coming days.
Plus: The Belgium push to encourage young people to sign up for voluntary military service appears to have worked, as the program starting Sept. 1 is already fully booked.
Are you taking part in voluntary military service, in Belgium or elsewhere? We’re intrigued. Get in touch on our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
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Europe’s security environment has fundamentally changed.
Alongside conventional military threats and cyberattacks, the EU is increasingly confronted with a more insidious form of hybrid pressure: the deliberate instrumentalization of migration by state and nonstate actors seeking to test Europe’s resilience, undermine its cohesion and extract political concessions.
Recent events at Europe’s borders, most notably in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, are the latest reminder that migration is no longer just a humanitarian issue or management challenge. In some cases, it has become a tool of geopolitical coercion.
The EU has made important progress on this issue with its Pact on Migration and Asylum. It has introduced mechanisms to manage migratory pressure, including flexibility in its procedures and solidarity among member countries. But these tools are designed for situations that remain, at their core, manageable. They do not adequately address scenarios in which migration is weaponized, or where flows are engineered, amplified or facilitated in a way that creates a de facto hybrid challenge.
To be sure, we don’t yet know what caused the situation that unfolded in Ceuta last week. But scenarios like these are not unprecedented.
Greece faced a similar situation at its land border with Turkey in Evros in 2020, as did Lithuania, Poland and Latvia at their borders with Belarus in 2021. What we are witnessing in these cases is not a gradual increase in arrivals but the sudden, massive and often coordinated movements of people — sometimes in the tens of thousands within just a few days — that overwhelm national capacities and test the EU’s resilience as a whole.
In such extreme circumstances, the immediate and full application of standard asylum and reception systems for all arrivals is not simply difficult — it is often impossible. Systems risk paralysis, public trust erodes and the very functioning of Schengen is put under strain.
Europe needs to acknowledge this gap and act decisively.
What is required is a dedicated European framework for situations of mass and instrumentalized migratory pressure, with clear and objective criteria for its activation. These criteria should combine quantitative elements — such as the scale and speed of arrivals relative to a country’s capacity — with qualitative indicators, including any evidence of coordination, facilitation or involvement by third countries or organized criminal networks.
Once triggered under a specifically defined EU emergency regime, a mechanism like this could allow for temporary, proportionate and strictly controlled adjustments to standard procedures. Accelerated asylum processes must also continue to be part of the toolbox, particularly for individuals coming from countries with low recognition rates for international protection.
EU flags fly in front of the European Commission’s Berlaymont building in Brussels on Feb. 17, 2025. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images
But this is not sufficient.
Europe has to be honest about the limits of its fast-track asylum procedures. In clearly defined exceptional situations of extreme and disproportionate pressure — whether at land borders or following mass arrivals by sea — member countries should be given the option, under a dedicated EU emergency regime, to temporarily suspend asylum applications for newly arrived persons while proceeding with the swift return of those not entitled to remain, in full compliance with the EU’s legal obligations.
This is not a departure from Europe’s values but a necessary adaptation to new realities.
Moreover, any such measures must be strictly time-bound, proportionate and subject to robust safeguards. Full respect for EU law, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and the principle of non-refoulement remains non-negotiable. At the same time, safeguarding international obligations must go hand in hand with the EU’s ability to protect its borders and preserve its internal stability.
Crucially, this balance cannot be sustained without genuine European solidarity. No member country facing this kind of pressure should stand alone. Operational support from EU agencies, coordinated return efforts and financial and technical assistance must be automatically mobilized whenever a mechanism to this effect is activated.
Without such a framework, the risks are clear. Frontline countries remain exposed, incentives grow for hostile actors to exploit migration for geopolitical purposes and internal divisions within the bloc deepen. Most importantly, citizens’ confidence in Europe’s ability to effectively, fairly and collectively manage its borders will continue to erode.
Europe has always adapted its policies to changing realities. Migration is no exception. And recognizing that it can be weaponized is not alarmism — it is realism.
The EU must now equip itself with the legal and operational tools needed to defend its external borders, deter those who seek to exploit its openness and respond to this new reality firmly, lawfully and collectively.
POLITICO occasionally publishes opinion pieces from guest authors to offer our readers a range of perspectives on the intersection of power and politics. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of POLITICO.
BRUSSELS — After days of recriminations over the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of migrants in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week, the EU’s 27 home affairs ministers are expected to use an emergency meeting Tuesday to express solidarity with Madrid and focus on how to prevent a repeat.
However, Spain will also criticize some governments for turning the crisis into an attack on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez instead of supporting a fellow EU country facing an emergency, according to an official familiar with Madrid’s plans, granted anonymity to speak freely. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska will present Madrid’s assessment of the events and make the case for a common European response, the official said.
After initial criticism of Spain, the mood among EU capitals has softened as the immediate crisis eased, according to eight diplomats from different countries who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Almost all the migrants who entered the exclave last week have returned to Morocco, Spanish authorities say, and there has been no reported onward movement into mainland Europe.
The groundwork for Tuesday’s meeting was set on Monday when EU ambassadors held talks that lasted around two and a half hours. The Spanish envoy gave Madrid’s account of the Ceuta crisis, during which more than 70 people died, and reprimanded some capitals for spreading disinformation, according to one of the diplomats. The ambassador was asked for verification of Madrid’s figures on returned migrants and for the situation to be closely monitored, two other diplomats said.
Concerns were also raised that Spanish government policies may have been used by people-smugglers and gangs to encourage the events in Ceuta.
“There’s a concern that … the legalization of a million irregular migrants, that it’s been possible [for people-smugglers] to use that to give the impression that the door was open,” said one diplomat from a country that has been critical of Spain.
Italy called for the EU to immediately establish migrant deportation hubs in non-EU countries, one of the diplomats said. The plans follow the approval of a law granting EU capitals the power to set up centers in non-EU countries for processing migrants who have been denied the right to stay in the bloc — so-called return hubs.
But the Spanish ambassador criticized Italy for amplifying false claims about the migrant regularization program, such as Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani’s suggestion on social media that it automatically grants EU citizenship. The program provides legal residency to eligible migrants but does not confer Spanish nationality.
Rallying to support Spain
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set the tone of conciliation on Monday by writing to Sánchez to praise Spain and Morocco for their handling of the crisis and calling for a united European response. She said the episode showed the need for stronger controls at the EU’s external borders, closer cooperation with partner countries, better early-warning systems, action against smuggling networks and more effective returns.
The interior ministers are expected to seek further rapprochement. Tuesday’s discussion will focus on lessons learned from Ceuta, ways to beef up controls at the bloc’s external borders and how to respond to potential future episodes of instrumentalized migration, rather than assigning blame for the crisis, three of the diplomats said.
“Everyone is both very willing and very eager to help, and acknowledged this has been a very difficult situation for Spain,” one of the EU diplomats said after the ambassadors’ gathering. The diplomat said Monday’s meeting had been calmer than the weekend’s public exchanges.
Twenty-two national leaders, in a letter initiated by Italy and Denmark, had on Saturday called for tougher external borders and warned against policies that could act as “pull factors” — an apparent reference to Spain’s plan to grant legal status to more than 1 million undocumented migrants. Madrid saw the letter as an attempt to blame the Spanish government for a crisis not of its making.
Tuesday’s videoconference will be chaired by Ireland’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan. Officials from EU border agency Frontex, the EU Asylum Agency, Europol, the European External Action Service and Schengen-associated countries will also participate.
The crisis has already pushed migration higher up the EU agenda. The issue was already meant to feature at the October European Council summit, but officials now expect it to play a much more prominent role in the run-up to that meeting, the diplomats said.
The Commission is expected to consider possible new migration measures in September, after examining what caused the sudden influx and whether social media or other actors helped organize or amplify it, three of the diplomats said. Strengthening Frontex is one option, with the Commission indicating to ambassadors Monday that it could propose additional steps to reinforce the agency’s role, according to the diplomats.
Max Griera contributed reporting.This article has been updated.
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s second election, voting for legislation to boost immigration enforcement could have seemed like a safe choice to some Democrats, who tied Donald Trump’s second presidential victory to a rejection of their party’s handling of immigration.
LONDON — On the ropes, Nigel Farage is going for a right hook.
The Reform UK leader — who has faced intense pressure over his finances over the summer — came out swinging Monday at a Westminster press conference focused on his core issue: borders.
Reform is pushing plans for a military drive — dubbed “Operation Fortress” — which it claims would ensure no small boat carrying undocumented migrants reaches the English coastline.
Under its proposals, an “integrated surveillance command” to track boats using drones, space satellites and infrared feeds would be established using the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Royal Marines and British Army.
Small boats would be intercepted at sea with their occupants detained, medically-assessed and given food and water before being returned on military inflatable boats to the country they came from, most likely France.
“I am entirely confident that under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats,” Farage — who took questions at a press conference for the first time since early May — told reporters.
“If the Royal Navy is not there to protect this country from invasion, then, frankly, I can’t see what its purpose is,” he added.
Seizing the agenda
The Reform announcement comes as the ruling Labour Party enjoys a modest bounce in opinion polls two weeks after swapping out Keir Starmer as prime minister for former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
Burnham has seized the agenda, announcing a flurry of spending commitments in his first fortnight in charge, and struck a more optimistic tone than his predecessor.
He also moves into No. 10 Downing Street with the salience of immigration slightly diminished. The number of people arriving in the U.K. on small boats was 43 percent lower between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1 this year compared to last year.
But Savanta’s Political Research Director Chris Hopkins explained that immigration remains a top issue for voters.
“It is important Burnham doesn’t ignore the issue given its general importance in U.K. politics,” he said. Hopkins adds that “getting the tone right is a tricky tightrope for a Labour prime minister to walk,” especially with the risk of turning off potential Labour-to-Green switchers on the left.
Easier said than done
Burnham has so far tried to show he’s on the front foot on migration. He has retained Shabana Mahmood as home secretary, one of the few holdovers from the Starmer era and a figure who has riled up some on the Labour left with more stringent immigration rules.
Shabana Mahmood arrives in Downing Street, London on Dec. 9, 2025. | Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
During a visit to Dover over the weekend, Burnham — with the famous white cliffs in the background — promised a “relentless” focus on small boat crossings.
“People want to see this issue addressed,” the prime minister said. “The public don’t like the idea that the border looks like it’s not controlled. We need to bring back that control, but also we need to offer support for people who genuinely need it,” he added.
Labour MP Sojan Joseph, whose Ashford constituency is near the Kent coast where many small boats arrive, praised Burnham’s approach so far — though argued that more action is needed.
“We must continue the positive work we’ve already done to reduce the number of small boat crossings and to close asylum hotels, with the hotel in my constituency already closed, to restore order to our borders — and deliver where the previous Tory government failed,” Joseph said.
On Monday, Burnham’s official spokesperson dismissed Reform’s proposals, insisting the Royal Navy already has “primacy for small boat crossings” and that border patrol officers have “significant capabilities and skills that make them the best suited candidate to lead small boats operations in the channel.”
In a BBC interview, former navy commander Tom Sharpe also questioned whether the Royal Navy has the capability to enforce Farage’s plans. Reform is “talking about the largest maritime operation in the Channel since World War Two, a very evocative image, but that’s not the reality,” he said.
Reform has also faced a host of questions about what it would do if France rejects the small boats that have been turned around and sent back to its coastline. Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said France would be committing a “crime against humanity” if it ordered French forces to block a “humanitarian mission landing civilians in safety and forcing them back out to sea, directly endangering their lives.”
Battle of the narratives
Beyond questions about its viability, Farage’s success will depend on whether he can keep attention on this policy — and away from the multiple controversies surrounding his party.
Farage is facing a special election in his seaside seat of Clacton next week, which he has billed as a chance for the public to show it is unfazed by “establishment” scrutiny of a £5 million gift he received from a cryptocurrency investor before the last election. Shortly before the Reform press conference kicked off Monday, the parliamentary standards watchdog confirmed it is separately investigating the party’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice over an allegation he failed to declare an interest.
The Reform UK leader is also facing pressure on his right flank from Rupert Lowe’s rival Restore Britain outfit.
Farage faced questions Monday about the potential for an alliance with Lowe’s breakaway party, which continues to poll in the single digits but threatens to split the vote on the right. The Reform UK chief said he would “do whatever I could for us to have a sane center-right alliance to beat Labour at the next general election” — though Lowe has continued to direct social media barbs at Farage in the hours since the press conference.
Right-wing splits aside, Farage will be hoping he can keep the political conversation on his terms — and not Burnham’s.
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sought to smooth over tensions with Spain after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez accused many of his fellow EU leaders of exploiting the migration crisis in Ceuta to attack his government.
In a letter sent to Sánchez on Monday, von der Leyen praised Spain’s handling of the influx of migrants from Morocco into its North African exclave. Her response came after Sánchez wrote to her over the weekend, condemning leaders who “have chosen to attack Spain and to call for its temporary exclusion from the Schengen Area.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday was the first to propose Spain be suspended from the 29-country Schengen zone in which internal border controls have largely been abolished. Italy and France both imposed restrictions on free movement last week.
Around 50,000 people crossed into Ceuta from Morocco last week, with dozens dying in the attempt. Almost all those who entered have since returned to Morocco.
Von der Leyen on Monday praised the “swift handling” of returns by Spanish and Moroccan authorities, saying they had “successfully prevent[ed] illegal movement onwards to mainland Spain and Europe.”
The exchange followed a joint letter from 22 EU leaders at the weekend calling for an emergency meeting of interior ministers and a tougher, coordinated response to the crisis. That meeting will take place on Tuesday, with EU ambassadors discussing the situation on Monday afternoon.
The intervention by EU leaders opened a new political fight over Spain’s migration policy, including Madrid’s plan to regularize more than 1 million undocumented migrants. Some governments argued that the measure created a “pull factor” by encouraging people to believe that irregular entry could eventually lead to legal residency.
Sánchez rejected that criticism in his letter, accusing some EU countries of responding in a “selfish,” “polarizing” and unlawful manner. He argued that Spain needed European solidarity rather than blame after the deaths and the strain placed on Ceuta’s authorities. The Spanish government refused to comment for this article.
Von der Leyen’s letter offered that solidarity while making clear that the crisis would also have to prompt stronger EU action.
“Migration is a European challenge that requires a European response,” she wrote. “And in this, solidarity is fundamental.” The Commission, she said, had offered Spain financial and operational support, with Frontex, Europol and the EU asylum agency ready to assist.
Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner on Friday told Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska that the bloc was willing to “increase support for Spain” to “control the situation,” and to deploy members of Frontex, the EU agency that supports member countries in monitoring and managing the EU’s external borders, to Ceuta.
Frontex currently has staff deployed in Ceuta, as well as on the Canary Islands and parts of the Andalusian coastline.
An official watches as people gather at the border between Morocco and Spain on July 31, 2026. | Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP via Getty Images
Madrid has repeatedly declined to request that the agency’s presence in Spain be increased, insisting that border control falls under the jurisdiction of national authorities. Following a surge in migrant arrivals to Ceuta in 2021, and an increase in arrivals to the Canary Islands in 2024, Spain’s interior ministry rejected calls to ask for Frontex’s support, insisting it had sufficient resources to manage the situation.
‘We must do more’
Von der Leyen said the incident had exposed weaknesses in the bloc’s border management. “It is clear that we must do more to further strengthen our borders at critical points,” the Commission president wrote, including through “vigilant monitoring and the use of physical barriers where needed.”
She outlined five priorities: preventing irregular migration through stronger cooperation with partner countries, reinforcing the EU’s external borders, establishing early-warning systems, dismantling smuggling networks, and improving returns.
Morocco, she said, remained an “important strategic partner” in combating migrant smuggling and irregular migration. The EU should work with Rabat and Madrid to improve early-warning systems around Ceuta and Melilla, as well as technical and financial support for Morocco, she said.
Von der Leyen also endorsed the emergency meeting of the EU’s justice and home affairs ministers on Tuesday, describing it as a first step toward a collective response. The ministers should agree on a way forward before EU leaders assess the measures at their next European Council meeting, she said.
“Spain and its people can count on the enduring support of the Commission,” von der Leyen concluded.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described last week’s sudden influx of 50,000 migrants into the exclave of Ceuta in North Africa as an “attack,” but has been careful to accuse people smugglers rather than the Moroccan authorities of orchestrating it.
That diplomatic position from Madrid is coming under pressure, however, from Spanish politicians from both the right and left, who argue that Rabat has questions to answer about the cross-border surge, in which 88 people died.
From the moment massive numbers of people began to enter the city last Thursday, Spanish Civil Guard forces reported that Moroccan gendarmes who normally assist in securing the border had inexplicably left their posts.
That led many to suspect that such a large flow of people could hardly be masterminded without the acquiescence of Morocco, which claims the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla as occupied territories.
Diplomatic speculation has also centered on whether Rabat could be flexing its muscles over Spain’s recent rapprochement with Algeria, which supports self-determination in Western Sahara — a territory claimed by Morocco.
“Let’s call things by their name: Morocco is using human beings to attack our sovereignty,” said Eduardo Rubiño, lawmaker with the Sánchez-allied, left-wing Más Madrid party.
Ceuta Mayor Juan Jesús Vivas from the conservative People’s Party on Monday said the situation could not be characterized as “a migration crisis” because “people have the perception that this, if not orchestrated, was encouraged or permitted” by Moroccan authorities.
Vivas conceded that Madrid had to do its utmost to continue working with Rabat, but also told Spanish newspaper El País that “Morocco has shown us that it is not reliable.”
Since the outset of the crisis, Spain’s Socialist-led government has prioritized smooth relations with Morocco, which will prove critical to resolving the crisis, rather than pinning the blame on Rabat.
A spokesperson for Spain’s foreign ministry insisted “the relationship with Morocco is excellent, and coordination on migration and other issues remains very strong.”
While visiting Ceuta on Friday, Sánchez characterized the crisis as “an attack, a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity,” but made no attempt to link Rabat to the operation, which he attributed to “mafias that traffic in human beings.”
Instead, he described Morocco as “an ally” and thanked Rabat for its help in repatriating the people who had entered the exclave without authorization.
Political liability
Moroccan authorities avoided addressing the Ceuta crisis until late on Sunday evening, when Interior Ministry Spokesperson Rachid El Khalfi delivered a statement blaming the sudden influx of migrants on social media posts “which aimed to create the illusion of easy access to the European space without legal consequences.”
“The Kingdom of Morocco will continue to be, as it has always been with its partners, a reliable and responsible partner, firmly committed to strengthening international cooperation and coordination in the fight against irregular migration and human trafficking,” El Khalfi said.
Spanish opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who heads the center-right People’s Party, this weekend demanded a clarification of “what failed in co-operation with Morocco” and said that Spain had a right to demand that Rabat deliver on its obligations on border security.
He said he wished Spain to “have a relationship of good neighborliness, cooperation, and mutual respect with Morocco,” but that “there are things that shouldn’t be done, and if they are, they must be met with a strong response.”
Still, the People’s Party has focused its broader political strategy on the Sánchez government’s failure to anticipate the sudden influx of migrants, rather than focusing on Morocco.
Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska this weekend claimed the country’s National Intelligence Center, which handles both foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence under the Ministry of Defense, had failed to warn Madrid of any developments on the border.
But intelligence sources quoted by Spain’s Cadena Ser radio network on Monday said that in the lead-up to last week’s crisis, the interior ministry had been warned that a mass entry into Ceuta could take place at any moment. Moreover, Spanish media reported that in July the ministry’s own Office for Refugees and Asylum warned that the growing number of migrants swimming to Ceuta could soon overwhelm the exclave.
“Sánchez and his government lie — as they always do,” People’s Party spokesperson Ester Muñoz said. “The government was warned by its intelligence services and did nothing.”
Brussels brawl
Madrid’s inability to anticipate the crisis will be under scrutiny at an emergency meeting of the EU’s ambassadors on Monday, and at a separate extraordinary summit of the bloc’s interior ministers scheduled for Tuesday.
Over the past five days, a plethora of EU leaders and far-right parties have slammed Spain for losing control of one of the bloc’s external borders and effectively bringing the Ceuta crisis upon itself by moving to grant legal status to 1.2 million unauthorized migrants.
In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, 22 of the bloc’s leaders on Saturday called for EU-level oversight on national policies “that can serve as pull factors.”
Ahead of Monday’s meeting of EU ambassadors, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares pushed back against Madrid’s critics in other European capitals and said his country would “demand solidarity from all the States of the European Union.”
“Spain currently has the lowest number of irregular entries on the Mediterranean route,” Albares said during an interview on Spanish state broadcaster TVE. Rather than question Madrid’s efforts, he insisted that the EU’s role was to support and assist Spain in the defense of “the only two European and Spanish cities that share a land border with Africa.”
At the same time that he chided critical member countries for their attitude, Spain’s foreign minister praised Rabat for its help in resolving the crisis.
“From the very beginning, Morocco offered its cooperation to try to prevent this flow of people and, above all, to ensure their immediate return, as is happening,” he said. “The vast majority of those who entered are already back in Morocco, and Morocco continues to offer this cooperation so that every last person who entered Ceuta returns to Morocco.”
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