The Balearic Islands have asked the State in a letter to stop the distribution of migrant minors in the islands.

PalmThe Regional Minister for Families, Social Welfare, and Dependency Care, Sandra Fernández, sent a letter this Monday to the Minister of Youth and Children, Sira Rego, requesting that she halt the transfer of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving in the Canary Islands. In the note, Fernández reminded her that the childcare services of the island councils are caring for 682 unaccompanied migrant minors, four times more than in 2022, and that this increase and the resulting overcrowding of 1,000% in these services directly impacts the quality of services.

"This situation has strained our system to the limit," Fernández says in the letter, "forcing us to multiply human, economic, and residential resources."

In the letter, the minister reminds them that, according to the Ministry itself, in March the Balearic Islands received 226 more minors than they were supposed to. Added to this is the fact that the arrival of these children and adolescents "is permanent," and within the framework of a consolidated route that has brought a total of more than 4,700 irregular migrants to the coasts of the Balearic Islands aboard boats so far this year, double the number in the same months of 2024, Fernández writes.

For all these reasons, the State's unilateral decision to assign new minors from other communities to the Balearic Islands, "without assessing our situation of overcrowding and without stable and sufficient funding," she says in the letter, "seriously compromises the viability of our protection system and puts other essential social services at risk."

"It violates the law"

The councilor reminds the minister of the appeals filed by the central government regarding the distribution of minors, which "violates legality, consensus, and the principle of territorial equality," since it follows "non-transparent and, in some cases, arbitrary criteria," ignoring the opinions of the regional governments.

For all these reasons, Fernández informs her of the impossibility of accepting new referrals of unaccompanied minors under the current circumstances. "Our will is to continue being a supportive community," she concludes, "but this cannot be done at the expense of jeopardizing the best interests of the minors we already serve or overwhelming a system that has reached its limits."