The Prosecutor’s Office is not satisfied with the precautionary suspension, urged by the Ministry itself, of the protocol approved on the 12th by the Canarian Government, which was intended to regulate the reception of unaccompanied migrant minors recently arrived in the autonomous community. The chief prosecutor of Justice in the Canary Islands, María Farnés Martínez, has requested on Friday to the Minister of Social Welfare, Equality, Youth and Families, Candelaria Delgado, to begin the procedures to develop a new protocol that regulates the entire process: from locating the minors to their identification, determining their age, and making them available to public protection services. This new legal text must be developed “in collaboration with the prosecution and other bodies, both regional and state,” the prosecutor stressed during the opening of the judicial year in the islands. Martínez also reminded the regional government of its “exclusive competence for the protection of minors.”
Sources from the Canarian Government have confirmed receiving a request to work on a new protocol, but they clarify: “We understand that it is not annulled, just suspended.” And they express their willingness to collaborate, if circumstances allow: “In any case, the Government of the Canary Islands will always sit down with the State to ensure the best interest of the child.” Justice has thwarted in the last week movements initiated by the government led by Fernando Clavijo (Coalición Canaria) in an attempt to alleviate the management of the approximately 5,400 children and adolescents who have arrived in the islands and to press for a political agreement that would allow for the mandatory referral of minors. The government announced a new reception protocol on the 12th, within the state framework protocol of 2014, which complicated the reception of unaccompanied migrant minors by the Canarian government by conditioning it to various procedures and the availability of places.
The Prosecutor’s Office immediately opposed this new regulation, even going as far as issuing a strong decree with instructions warning the regional government that they could be committing a crime of child abandonment. On the 13th, the Canary Islands High Court suspended the protocol in a “precautionary” manner. The Canarian government has appealed this suspension. Days before, an NGO had denounced the government agreements taken on the 2nd. This Wednesday, the High Court also suspended this instruction in a precautionary manner. These are the events leading up to the comments of the chief prosecutor of the Canary Islands during an event where neither President Clavijo (traveling in Cape Verde), nor the Minister of the Presidency, Public Administrations, Justice, and Security, Nieves Lady Barreto, attended.
The prosecutor praised the efforts made by the Canarian government in caring for minors arriving on boats to the islands, but also issued veiled warnings. She emphasized that they will always prioritize the “best interest of the child,” which “must be superior to other interests at stake.” The attention to migrant minors is a matter included in the Canarian autonomy statute, which grants the region “exclusive competence for the protection of minors without any distinction between them.” The prosecutor subtly warned the regional government about the limited number of minors being documented and the possibility that a significant number of them might leave protection centers once they reach legal age without the necessary residence permit.
The prosecutor also addressed cases of abuse and neglect detected in the more than 80 reception centers on the islands. She mentioned that the Children’s Sections of the prosecutors’ offices have visited these facilities, both existing ones and those opened due to the current migrant crisis, and any deficiencies found have been communicated to the relevant authorities. In this regard, the Minors Prosecutor of the Supreme Court will visit the Canary Islands next week to assess the reception network and the work done by prosecutors in the islands in this area and to hold a working meeting with Candelaria Delgado.
