Thousands of Moroccans attempt to illegally immigrate collectively to escape extreme poverty

Thousands of Moroccans wishing to immigrate illegally tried to flee the city of Fnideq to Ceuta in the Spanish enclave on Sunday evening, escaping extreme poverty and hardship due to the oppressive policies of the Makhzen, amid questions about these human crowds that reached the border area and about the maneuver played by this regime to blackmail Spain.
Video clips broadcast by Moroccan activists and local media showed security forces in the city of Fnideq (northern Morocco) chasing young men wishing to immigrate, in search of a decent life opportunity on the other side after life became difficult for them in the Kingdom.
According to local media reports, many Moroccan families flocked to the land crossing late Sunday night to search for their children and inquire about their fate, whether they are in police stations or being deported outside the northern cities by bus or were able to cross, while dozens of young men continue to hide in the nearby mountains waiting for the opportunity to cross.
The head of the Northern Observatory for Democracy, Mohamed Benaissa, stated in press statements that initial estimates indicate that approximately five thousand Moroccans were arrested in the security operation that accompanied a call for mass migration on September 15, without knowing the source of this call.
Benaissa also confirmed that most of those arrested were children, minors, and young people in their twenties.
In an article titled “The Moroccan is closer to the immigrant in his homeland,” Moroccan journalist Younes Meskine confirmed that migration to the city of Ceuta is not just a search for an economic opportunity or a response to a call, but rather a reflection of the desire of young people to find an environment that provides them with social stability, saying: “These young people feel that they are threatened in their homeland by instability as a result of unemployment, the absence of social guarantees, and the lack of a clear horizon for their lives in the absence of any project, offer, or reliable dream.”
He added that “the quest to migrate reflects a deep feeling that Morocco does not provide its children with the social protection they aspire to, whether in the form of housing, work, or health care.”
He  went on to say, “These young people no longer see their homeland as a guarantee for building a decent life, so they risk their lives in search of safety in a new environment that may be harsh but offers them hope for a more stable future.”
According to observers, what happened on Sunday night is not only related to Moroccans trying to flee the miserable reality in the Kingdom, but in a certain way, the Makhzen is trying to blackmail Madrid with the illegal immigration card to submit to its demands, even if they are contrary to international legitimacy, expressing surprise at the crowds of people who flocked to the Moroccan-Spanish border all at once in response to a call that spread across social media.
It is not unlikely that the arrival of thousands of Moroccans to the border area between Morocco and Spain is a message from the Makhzen to the government of Pedro Sanchez that any step it takes that conflicts with the interests of the Makhzen, whether in Western Sahara or elsewhere, will be met with thousands of illegal immigrants.
To make the message clear and more meaningful, the security forces of the Makhzen suppressed young people who tried to migrate and threw many of them in prison to show that Morocco is “protecting the European borders” and playing the role of the gendarmerie, as confirmed by many Moroccan and international human rights organizations.
Morocco had previously used the illegal immigration card against Spain when it received the President of the Sahrawi Arab Republic in 2022 in a Spanish hospital, which caused a crisis with Morocco, followed by a major blackmail operation that was among the reasons that prompted the Spanish Prime Minister to recognize the alleged Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
The former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aranca Gonzalez Laya, had spoken about the blackmail practiced by Morocco on her country in order to change its position on the Sahrawi issue, using the immigration file as a means of pressure, in addition to the blackmail practiced by the Makhzen in the context of its use of the Zionist “Pegasus” system to spy on European officials, human rights activists and journalists.
It should be noted that Morocco also uses African immigrants to pressure Spain to take a more favorable stance, as its forces committed a horrific “massacre” on June 24, 2022, through the bloody suppression of African immigrants who were trying to enter the Spanish city of Melilla, which resulted in the brutal killing of dozens of them.