As many as 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Spain’s tiny North African territory of Ceuta between Wednesday and Friday, triggering a chaotic humanitarian crisis and a flurry of fierce political attacks on both sides of the Atlantic.
“It looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people,” President Trump said Friday at Camp David, adding that the “same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected” in the 2026 midterms.
By Friday afternoon, most of the migrants had voluntarily returned to Morocco, according to the Spanish government, which deployed its armed forces and additional police to restore order in Ceuta. Spanish authorities said at least 60 people died in the frantic rush to scale border fences, stampede checkpoints and swim miles through the sea to the territory — scenes that were captured on video and shared on social media.
Here’s everything you need to know about what’s happening — and how it connects to America’s own immigration debates.
What is Ceuta?
Ceuta is an autonomous Spanish city (population: about 83,000) that sits on the northern coast of Africa, along the Strait of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. It has been under Spanish rule since 1580. Along with Melilla, another autonomous autonomous city farther east along the same coast, Ceuta is one of the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. The border is fortified by a double fence and the presence of Spanish police and paramilitary forces.
Why did so many migrants cross into Ceuta this week?
Due to its unique location, Ceuta has long been a migration hotspot. But this week’s surge was singular. Just 2,698 migrants arrived in Ceuta and Melilla by land during the first half of 2026, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry. When Morocco briefly dropped border controls in 2021 amid tensions with Spain, about 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta over two days. And even the peak of the region’s 2015 Syrian migrant crisis only saw about 11,000 people enter the EU each day.
This week’s migrant influx was many times larger. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez blamed human traffickers for taking advantage of a recent ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court that migrants arriving by sea could not be summarily deported without due process. While it is unlikely that migrants themselves knew the details of the decision, Spanish media interviewed many who said they decided to make the crossing after seeing text messages or social media posts suggesting the border was “open.”
That misinterpretation “spread like wildfire over the past few hours through the networks of human trafficking organizations,” Sánchez said in Ceuta on Friday, adding that they “deceive so many young people and ultimately lead many of them to their deaths.”
Migrants return to Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Friday, July 31, 2026.
(AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)Abdulah Buji, a 21-year-old from the Moroccan city of Tetouan, told the Associated Press that he came in search of better work opportunities. “There’s nothing at home,” Buji said. “I’d have to work 12-hour shifts for a meager wage.”
Migrants from Morocco also tried to enter Melilla, where they clashed with police. Many Moroccans view both cities to be occupied territory.
The New York Times wrote on Friday that it had spoken to “several Moroccans who say they were encouraged to cross into Ceuta by the Moroccan authorities,” leading some to speculate that Morocco intentionally opened the border. But according to the AP, “the first response by Spanish officials was to say that Moroccan counterparts were working alongside them to stop the rush.”
On Thursday, Morocco’s ambassador to Spain said the migrants had entered Ceuta “outside of our will” and that Morocco “wants these citizens to return to our country.”
Why are so many migrants turning back now?
They’re turning back because of a combination of police and military pushback on both sides of the border and the chaos in Ceuta.
For starters, arriving in Ceuta isn’t a free pass to keep going into Europe. While Ceuta is part of the EU — and the EU allows freedom of movement across most of its member states — the Spanish territory operates under special rules that restrict onward travel. A senior EU official told the New York Times on Friday that none of the migrants who crossed into Ceuta have continued into mainland Spain or beyond.
Meanwhile, authorities fired water cannons, tear gas and warning shots at migrants who tried to swim into Ceuta. They later placed buoys in the breakwater to act as a “containment barrier,” deployed military platoons to enforce border security and sent dive teams to patrol the waters.
Migrants rest outside the Temporary Center for Immigrants (CETI) after crossing from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Friday, July 31, 2026.
(AP Photo/Antonio Sempere)In Ceuta itself, conditions deteriorated quickly. Locals told the AP that “thousands of migrants, including unaccompanied children, were left sleeping in parks and on sidewalks, while others roamed the streets aimlessly.” Ceuta’s authorities announced they would not provide food or shelter.
“I haven’t found any opportunities here either,” Buji, the 21-year-old migrant, told the AP, “so I have to go back.”
Why is Trump weighing in?
More than anything else, Trump built his political brand on a hardline approach to immigration. After former President Joe Biden took office in 2021 and reversed some of Trump’s first-term restrictions, Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border surged to more than 2 million per year on average — the highest level on record.
Democrats and other defenders of Biden’s record said the causes were complicated and predated his presidency: foreign violence, economic hardship and cartels that profit from crossings. Republicans and other Biden critics argued that the former president effectively encouraged migrants to try their luck by using immigration parole at a historic scale and ordering a pause on most U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and deportations.
By the time Trump returned to office in January 2025, border apprehensions had plummeted to about 25,000 per month from a high of 250,000 in December 2023. They have remained at near record lows ever since, and Trump has credited his immigration policies — mass deportations, asylum restrictions, third-country removals, expanded border barriers and enforcement — for the decline.
Yet after controversial ICE raids in major cities and several fatal shootings involving ICE agents, a majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, according to recent polls.
On Friday, Trump seized on the scenes from Ceuta, predicting they would “be a talking point for the midterms.”
“When you look at what happened to Spain, they don’t know what to do,” the president told reporters at Camp David. “That is weak law — bad management, but very liberal law. They passed a couple of laws and people read. People are smart. They read from other countries, and they swam that 3-mile swim or however they got in.”
“It’s terrible,” Trump added in an interview with Fox News. “Remember that picture. That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in. If the Democrats get in, you will not live a very good life.”
Dozens of migrants attempt to cross into Ceuta from Morocco on July 31, 2026.
(Europa Press News via Getty Images)What are others saying?
Trump’s comments reflect a broader transatlantic debate over immigration policy. Earlier this year, the president criticized Sánchez for moving to give one-year renewable residence permits to hundreds of thousands of migrants who had been living in the country without legal status. Sánchez, a Socialist, argued that it would boost the economy and help offset Spain’s aging population. It only applies to migrants who arrived before Jan. 1, 2026, and excludes those with criminal records or fewer than five months of residency.
In a post on X, the U.S. State Department said that this week’s “unacceptable incident is the direct result of the Spanish Government’s deliberate efforts to enable and facilitate mass illegal migration into Europe” — a claim that Sánchez denied.
The crisis in Ceuta “has nothing to do with the regularization of migrants adopted by the Government of Spain, as is being falsely claimed by some,” the Spanish government said in a statement late Thursday.
“This situation is unprecedented,” Sánchez added. “It breaks the trend that we have been recording throughout Spain of a systematic reduction year after year, month by month, in the arrivals of irregular migrants.”
Yet anti-migration politics has become a potent force across Europe, and right-wing leaders in other EU countries also criticized Spain.
“The images coming from Ceuta are striking and demonstrate, once again, that uncontrolled illegal immigration poses a concrete threat to the security of Europe’s borders,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on social media. She also called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen agreement, which allows passport-free travel across much of Europe.
“Borders must now be closed and rejections rigorously enforced,” added Alice Weidel, co-leader of a far-right German party. “2015 must not repeat itself!”
In response, Sánchez said on social media that “what has happened is an attack on Spain’s territorial integrity and deserves our most resounding and energetic condemnation.” But he added that “this is the moment to build solutions, with responsibility and cooperation.”
