What We Know About Migrant Surge on Tiny Peninsula

Spain on Friday claimed progress on reversing an extraordinary migrant surge into its North African exclave of Ceuta, the latest flashpoint in the international debate over immigration. Spain's Interior Ministry estimates about 50,000 people crossed by land and sea from Morocco since Thursday, but the ministry said Friday that about 25,000 had gone back. Reuters saw evidence of that as hundreds returned to Morocco via border posts. The numbers remain in flux: Ceuta's local leader put the original figure of migrants higher, at up to 60,000. Roughly 40 people died while crossing, mostly by drowning.

• "Honestly, I don't even know why I came, and now I'm going back," a young Moroccan man told Reuters on Friday. "I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday, even though I brought some money with me. ... What we're doing is neither good nor enjoyable."
• Ceuta is a tiny peninsula on the coast of Morocco long governed by Spain, one of only two cities in Africa that are technically part of Europe, explains the New York Times. It's not unusual for migrants to try to cross from Morocco into Ceuta by scaling a 20-foot fence or via the sea, but the scale of this week's mass surge was so unprecedented that Spain mobilized its military. It's not clear what prompted the surge.
• Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who visited Ceuta on Friday and called the mass entry a breach of Spanish sovereignty, said repatriations were being accelerated with Morocco's cooperation. He blamed human smugglers for the crisis, per the AP.
• The rush deepened EU splits over migration. Sanchez, a Socialist, has not embraced the anti-immigration sentiment seen elsewhere in Europe, moving earlier this year to give work permits and residency status to hundreds of thousands migrants already in the nation. In the wake of this week's Ceuta controversy, France said it was tightening checks on its border with Spain, and Italy threatened to suspend Spain from the EU's open-border scheme, per Reuters.