“Please, remove us from this imprisonment”

MORE INFORMATION The driver of a van trample two immigrants in Ceuta and then try to secuestrarlos

Houari Buedine is an algerian serious, robust, and bearded. Intimidates. Until crumbly and breaks into tears like a child. Their four daughters are watching to see how and silencionesas every tear that pours out her father as she recounts her odyssey of migration in the that up to had to jump into the sea with the girls to flee from the mafia.

yours is one of the families who live trapped in the Centre for Temporary Stay of Immigrants (CETI) of Ceuta without the possibility of travel to the mainland because Interior does not authorize it. “Please, break us out of this bull run”, beg. Don't hold up to more. The patriarch and his wife, Majda Elarbi, eight months pregnant, they decided to make the bags last month and bring their daughters, two -, five -, ten-and 12-year-old a safe place, away from your country, which ensures that the gangs are funded with the abduction of children. “They stole the children of our neighbors. We think of change of city, but in Algeria, the mafia is everywhere,” warns the father, a car salesman.

The family spent their savings to come to Spain. Algeria came to Casablanca by plane and then by bus to Castillejos, on the border with Ceuta. For 2,500 euros got them in an old boat. The girls cried and hugged the mother during the hour and a half journey in which the barge was filled with water. The story thrills to Majda who dries the tears with her hijab. The interview has to be interrupted several times to recompongan.

When it seemed that the journey was nearing its end, the pattern I asked for more money before disembarking. The woman and three of the small took to the water while one of the sisters, still in the boat, looked terrified how her father struggled to save a thousand euros, which he wore on the jacket. Lost everything, but managed to leave the boat to swim with her in her arms.

The Buedine, with young children and willing to almost everything to make them safe, they are a treat for the criminals whose tentacles reach to the own immigrant center, where they are hosted since October. The mafias who traffic with people as they also operate in the same CETI, offering tickets at the price of the cruise to arrive at the Peninsula to those who despair of getting off. Ready to welcome some 500 people, of Ceuta has reached 1,200. Never was a place for families.

Houari and his men, as well as 15 other families with children in Ceuta and a hundred in Melilla, are not allowed to leave the autonomous cities for being in an irregular situation. Its streets are all Europe that they have a right to see, and the CETI, the only place that can accomodate you, unless the National Police authorises its output to the Peninsula with a permit for humanitarian reasons. These permits, which are essential for not colpasar centres, are granted especially to sub-saharan africa and, rarely, are transferred to the algerian or Youwin moroccan.

Zaid and Fatima with their children in Ceuta. marcos moreno

to Apply for asylum is not a solution for families. To the claimants for international protection in Ceuta and Melilla, which should have the same rights as the rest, they are not allowed to trespass the limits of the two cities until it is resolved your record. The system converts the centre in a state of limbo for the north africans. The younger, with less to lose, opt for to try to flee even hidden in the hollow of the engines of the boats. But the families have no option but to wait in rooms full of bunk beds shared.

The scam of the mafias

within four days of arriving, a fellow offered to the Buedine a trip in a boat with rooms, such as the ferry linking Ceuta and Tarifa or Algeciras. The girls would go free. The rate: the last 2,000 euros that I had left. The family, guided by smugglers, he came to a beach, but there were no boat. They had been ripped off. The complaint filed is a dash of action movie. Houari enraged and took to beating one of the ringleaders to the police station by signing a declaration of war against the traffickers who can't win. The next day they tried hitting you and kidnap him when he was heading to the CETI, becoming on the cover of the local press. Today, dead of fear, the whole family takes more than a month without leaving the premises. “The girls not going to school for fear that they pass something. Go very wrong, tremble at night,” explains Majda.

Zaid Elhachemi and his colleagues are also trapped in Ceuta. His wife Fatima is five months pregnant and three children, two, four and nine years old, have an entire catalog of allergies and infections. “Can't take it any more. You can't live here. You can't rest, there is no hygiene for children.” Here you have a doctor, clothes, good food, and legal assistance, but the place is a powder keg. The balance of a Thursday, sunny in the young sub-saharan africans listen to music while washing the clothes you can jump into the air with a snap and end up in a brawl. Zaid and his family lived the last fight against the door, locked in a room.

The Elhachemi refuse to return to Algeria for the same reason, and fear that their compatrioras. They began to receive letters in which they were required to money if they wanted to keep their children. “We spent two years without leaving with the children or to the park,” illustrates Zaid. He came in the boat, the women and the children they rented out for 200 euros a Spanish passport, to sneak through the busy border ceuta two months ago. “The hardest part of the journey is the CETI. I never imagined that to be so, I thought that there would be a suitable place for women and children,” says Zaid, upset with his wife and their children hacinen in a room with two other families. “My only dream is to get out of here, we can not more”.