NGO condemns Barcelona migrant detention center over visiting rights

Migra Studium, a Jesuit NGO, has condemned the visiting regime at the migrant detention center (CIE) in Barcelona's Zona Franca, saying it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic norms.

According to the charitable organization, the current visiting regime has not changed since June 2021, when limited face-to-face visits were allowed again under certain conditions due to the pandemic.

In practice, members of the organization explained, this has made it difficult for human rights organizations to visit people being held at the detention center run by Spain's interior ministry.

"With the current visiting regime, it is not possible to document things properly," Josetxo Ordóñez, a lawyer for Migra Studium and co-author of the report 'Hostile Territory', said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Migra Studium is one of the few NGOs with permission to access the CIE, since 2013. According to Ordóñez, until 2020 they had no issues visiting people, with volunteers visiting up to six days a week. Now visits are only allowed three days a week, he explained.

There has also been "high tension" in the Zona Franca center and others during the pandemic, with assaults, a lack of health care and barriers to visitors, Ordóñez said.

One Migra Studium volunteer talked about how things have changed since the pandemic.

Before, Santi Bolíbar explained, "other detained migrants who spoke Spanish or Catalan were allowed to interpret for us, but they are no longer allowed to do so."

Facilities for visiting, accessing translators and using a mobile phone to help with translation have all been "shut down," he said.

"Hidden" restrictions

As the pandemic eased in 2021 and visiting was resumed, as well as the normal health restrictions in place in other settings, the detention center also "imposed" additional measures, "hidden within the pandemic situation," Ordoñez said.

Detainees had to request visits by appointment only, and previous methods of communication via a landline in the center or a Migra Studium mailbox were not allowed.

The NGO report also condemned the conditions experienced by some during the pandemic, with no leisure activities, quarantines poorly implemented and cells of up to six people.

Carmen de la Fuente, coordinator of the Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM) and director of Migra Studium, said that the CIEs are "a symbol of hostility" towards foreign nationals and said it was regrettable that they are still in use.