Twenty-three sub-Saharans, including ten women, three of them pregnant, and eight children, were rescued off the coast of Melilla after their dinghy was punctured and in danger of sinking.
The passengers, none of whom had remembered to take any sort of documentation with them on their journey, were transferred to port and, after receiving medical checks, were lodged in the Temporary Centre for Immigrants (CETI) in Melilla.
The Temporary Centre is designed to house 480 people but there are already over 800 at the facility. The administrative procedures for deportation take many months and are often never actually concluded. The system obviously needs an overhaul.