Spain sends rescued migrants to controversial centre

Of the 208 rescued people, 132 - including 10 women, and 23 children and unaccompanied minors, were taken to the new facility known as a CATE in Malaga. Human rights groups believes that the new migrant handling facility run by police is nothing but a detention centre in disguise.

Malaga: Authorities in Spain have used a new and controversial migrant handling facility in Malaga for the first time after 208 people were rescued from the Mediterranean Sea in just one day by the Spanish maritime rescue service.

Of the 208 rescued people, 132 - including 10 women, and 23 children and unaccompanied minors, were taken to the new facility known as a CATE (Centro de Atencion Temporaria para Extranjeros).

Its a Spanish acronym for a temporary attention centre for foreigners.

Spain's interior ministry said that the centre was built in response to the increase in migration flow in the western Mediterranean, which was the most used route in 2018 for migrants crossing from Africa to Europe.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has described the centre as a type of "police station" with basic services for migrants including translators and health workers for a maximum stay of three days.

But human rights groups said that the new migrant handling facility run by police is nothing but a detention centre in disguise.

On Wednesday evening, an Associated Press video crew witnessed several children being carried by police into the fenced centre including an unaccompanied little girl, who has since been removed from the centre.

"Until now the protocol for women and children once they arrived (in Spain) was they would go through the Red Cross triage and then they would be taken by NGOs to either a municipal shelter or reception centre," said Francisco Jose Guerreros, a worker of Andalucia Human Rights group APDHA.

"Now to take them to an extension of a police station, as the ministry of the Interior describes it, we don't believe it is the adequate protocol for these people," Guerreros added.

Once inside the CATE, which has a capacity for 300 people, the migrants are held there for a maximum of 72 hours before being redirected to NGOs that can assist them.

Inside the facility, made out of containers, men women and children are held separately.

So far, Guerreros said that neither his group nor the Red Cross have been allowed into the facility although the Interior Minister had said UNHCR and Spain's Refugee Aid Commission would be able to.

Guerreros also criticised the facility's architecture, saying that it is too small to host 300 people according to the floor plans that his organisation has seen.

Grande-Marlaska argues that the CATE centres are more humane than the CIE (migration detention centres) where migrants are held under a judge's order pending deportation.