Ceuta Death Toll Reaches 67 as Spain Says Most Migrants Have Returned to Morocco

The death toll in Spain's Ceuta border crisis with Morocco has climbed to 67, the Spanish government said Saturday. The dead include people who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier.

Spain announced it was installing a 500-meter-long containment barrier along the breakwater fence into the sea after some 60,000 migrants breached the territory's frontier between Thursday and Friday. That's the same stretch where several of the deaths occurred during the crush of people trying to force their way across.

Spain's interior ministry says the majority of those who entered the Spanish territory in North Africa have already returned to Morocco. After days of chaos and streets packed with people who had hoped for a better life in Spain, residents of Ceuta woke up Saturday to an uneasy calm.

On Saturday morning, soldiers intercepted a handful of exhausted migrants who swam to Ceuta's Tarajal beach and escorted them back across the border, the AP reported. Even so, security for residents of the autonomous city of 84,000 remained bruised.

Ceuta's President Juan Jesus Vivas described a city still shaken. "Life in this city has been disrupted as a result of the border incident," Vivas said. "The return of people has begun satisfactorily but the process must be completed. The city has not yet returned to normal."

Not everyone left. Mohamed Hatri, a 23-year-old Moroccan, told the AP he intends to stay in Ceuta regardless of what Spanish authorities do. "They've closed everything down so that we can't buy anything to eat, to force us to return to our country," Hatri said. "But even if they close it down we're bound to stay here, whether we're hungry or not."

Spain has a right, and an obligation, to control who enters its territory. Sovereign borders aren't a suggestion. But Hatri's situation, and thousands like him, didn't materialize from nothing. People don't risk drowning or getting crushed in a stampede for a shot at a better life unless the alternative feels worse.

The AP's own fact-checking arm flagged that the Ceuta crossing has bred a wave of unsubstantiated claims online. Viral narratives about who organized the crossing, or why, should be treated with skepticism until Spanish or Moroccan officials confirm details on the record.

The open question is what happens if this repeats. A 500-meter barrier addresses one crossing point. It doesn't address whatever is driving people out of Morocco in the first place, and it doesn't resolve whether Spain and Morocco will coordinate better border enforcement going forward. Vivas's own words confirm normal life hasn't returned yet, and no announcement of a longer-term migration agreement between Spain and Morocco has been made.