Turkey said on Wednesday that it is ready to sign an agreement with Egypt on the delimitation of maritime zones, claiming Cairo would gain more than 15,000 square kilometres of extra jurisdiction compared with a deal with Greece.

Turkish defence ministry spokesman Admiral Zeki Akturk made the offer at the ministry’s weekly briefing.

“We are ready to sign an agreement on the delimitation of maritime jurisdiction zones with Egypt, in accordance with mutual interests,” he said.

He estimated that Egypt would acquire “more than 15,000 square kilometres of additional maritime jurisdiction” compared with a potential agreement with Athens.

Akturk also welcomed the approval by the Libyan House of Representatives on October 20 of the 2019 memorandum on maritime jurisdiction between Turkey and Libya.

The ministry called it “an important development” that supports Ankara’s approach, which it claimed “rests on international law” and takes account of “the rights of the coastal states involved”.

It said Turkey “will continue to protect its legitimate rights and interests in the Eastern Mediterranean”.

The memorandum was signed with the Tripoli-based government of Fayez al-Sarraj and draws a maritime boundary between the Turkish and Libyan coasts that disregards the Greek islands in between, including Crete.

Greece, Cyprus and the EU rejected the MOU as “null and void”, and Egypt also objected to the deal.

Egypt signed a partial delimitation agreement with Greece in August 2020, a move seen at the time as a response to the Turkish and Libyan accord.

Egypt has not publicly responded to the latest Turkish offer.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) insists that it has the right to search Americans' private data without a warrant when entering the country. But ordered to explain one of these searches by a judge, the agency is now trying to wiggle out from under the microscope, invoking its own data privacy.

On Friday, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia ordered CBP to explain the seizure of a local psychiatric nurse's phone and laptop at Washington Dulles International Airport. CBP argued that the court should seal this information from both the public and the nurse himself in order to protect "privileged law enforcement information."

Brinkema initially agreed to let CBP file parts of its response "sealed and ex parte," meaning that neither the public nor the nurse would get to look at them. After reading the filings, the judge declared on Tuesday afternoon "that most of the redacted information is not privileged law enforcement information and should not be sealed." She gave CBP until Thursday at noon to object to unsealing the documents.

"Without knowing what happened, we cannot assess the extent of CBP's violation of our clients' rights. This raises serious concerns about government improperly invoking privilege to cover up wrongdoing," says Jenin Younes, a civil libertarian lawyer and president of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, who is representing the nurse. "The court was right to unseal most of the redacted material so we can assess the extent to which the government behavior was improper."

Younes has stacked up a series of victories against CBP's electronic searches. Over the past few months, she sued on behalf of lawyer Jalal "Jay" Shehadeh and (non-Arab) journalist Max Blumenthal, both of whom had their phones seized at the airport by CBP without explanation. CBP tried to preempt a legal battle by giving their phones back almost immediately. Younes is still pressing to get information about what happened to their data.

Although CBP policy states that the agency will delete all data within 21 days unless there is "probable cause to believe the information contains digital contraband or evidence of a violation of law that CBP is authorized to enforce or administer," a 2018 lawsuit seemed to show that CBP was holding onto the data until someone bothered to demand its return.

Psychiatric nurse Muhammad Numaan Imam's case started similarly to Shehadeh's and Blumenthal's cases. CBP agents demanded to open his phone at the airport without explanation. He refused, arguing that patient emails and case-management software were protected by privacy laws. CBP then confiscated all of his and his wife Khadijah Mansoor's electronics. Almost immediately after Younes filed the suit on his behalf, CBP tried to argue that the case was moot because it was giving back the phone.

But Brinkema immediately agreed with Imam and Mansoor's "legitimate concerns about what was done with their electronic devices," ordering CBP to "explain why the devices of both plaintiffs were seized" and to provide sworn statements from "each person who handled any of the devices" describing exactly what was done to them.

On Monday night, the court published heavily redacted declarations from CBP Assistant Port Director Lauren Colgan, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) technician Caige McCabe, and CBP technician Ashlie Fisch.

"Mr. Imam and Ms. Mansoor presented valid, un-expired travel documents to CBP Officers in the primary inspection and were referred for secondary inspection," Colgan's declaration states. The next few sentences are blacked out. The declaration then recounts the couple explaining their early return from their anniversary vacation in Turkey and states that the CBP officer asked to open their electronics, without explaining why.

"Because of Mr. Imam's and Ms. Mansoor's refusal to provide access to their electronic devices, CBP informed Mr. Imam and Ms. Mansoor their devices would be detained to continue the border search," Colgan continues, noting that Port Director Christine Waugh signed off on holding the devices for more than five days, as CBP policy requires.

On October 17, a day after CBP seized the phones, it asked DHS headquarters for "technical assistance" with Imam's devices according to McCabe. "My examination of Mr. Imam's phone was limited to device specifications and high-level file-system structure," he states in the declaration. The next few sentences are blacked out. "I did not access or view the contents of Mr. Imam's laptop," McCabe continues. The next few sentences after that are also blacked out. "I did not access any medical information" on either the phone or laptop, McCabe concludes, stating that the devices were in his custody until he handed them back to CBP on October 21.

Fisch then received Imam's devices at CBP Laboratories and Scientific Services. Everything of substance in her declaration is redacted, beyond taking the devices on October 21 and sending them back to Washington Dulles Airport the next day. There is no unredacted explanation of what happened to Mansoor's devices.

Brinkema argued in her Tuesday order that only two sentences, both from Colgan's declaration, were legitimately blacked out. "Accordingly, the Court will unseal all other redacted information in the Declarations unless the defendants can show good cause why such information should not be unsealed," she wrote.

U.S. law gives border officers much wider authority to search for contraband in situations where normal police would need a warrant or probable cause under the Fourth Amendment. CBP argues that its powers extend to searching and seizing travelers' electronics without any explanation at all. Courts have given contradictory rulings on how far those searches can go, and the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in yet, leaving a gray area that CBP is happy to take advantage of.

Imam's case has resulted in "the most detailed explanation of what the government did with our clients' electronic devices—or it would be if so much wasn't redacted," Younes tells Reason. "I look forward to seeing the unredacted versions."

The post CBP Really Doesn't Want To Reveal What It Does to Americans' Phones appeared first on Reason Magazine.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized a psychiatric nurse practitioner's phone filled with confidential patient information at Washington Dulles International Airport last week, according to a new lawsuit. Muhammad Numaan Imam alleges that CBP agents told him that they could take his electronics the "easy way or the hard way" and refused to let him talk to his lawyer because "we are the authorities at the border."

The lawsuit by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) may be the first time CBP is taken to court over seizing people's medical records. ADC is also helping Palestinian-American lawyer Jay Shehadeh and Jewish-American journalist Max Blumenthal sue over their devices being seized.

"We're seeing a pattern where officers use their border-search authority not to advance any legitimate border-related purpose, but to punish individuals for refusing to provide access to their personal electronic devices and for having expressed views the government didn't approve of," ADC president and legal director Jenin Younes wrote in a statement emailed to journalists.

While Shehadeh and Blumenthal claim that CBP is retaliating for their political views, Imam argues that he faced threats and retaliation with the simple act of asserting privacy rights. Both Imam and Shehadeh were considered "trusted travelers" under the Global Entry program, which allows American citizens who undergo a background check to pass through an automated fast track at airports and borders.

Asked by Reason, a CBP spokesperson did not address any specifics of the case, giving only a generic statement about how "CBP's ability to lawfully inspect electronic devices crossing the border is integral to keeping America safe in an increasingly digital world."

The border exemption to the Fourth Amendment gives U.S. authorities the power to look for "contraband" crossing into the country without a warrant. There is a mess of contradictory court rulings on whether that power includes searching travelers' electronic data, but in practice, CBP can simply seize the physical devices that the data live on.

And the agency often lies outright to travelers whose data that it wants to search, as documents recently released in the case of Atlanta protester Samuel Tunick show. CBP agents gave Tunick a false reason for detaining him and falsely promised that he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated, even though they were under orders to seize his devices no matter what. Tunick is now on trial for allegedly tricking the CBP agents into deleting his data to avoid a search.

"It's happening to a lot of people, and it's being used in this coercive, inappropriate way," Younes tells Reason.

The problems for Imam, who lives in Virginia, actually began at another border. He was heading to Istanbul on Saturday for a family vacation with his Pakistani wife, Khadijah Mansoor, and their 1-year-old child. Turkish authorities demanded to see Mansoor's U.S. green card, which she had forgotten at home, and wouldn't let her enter on her Pakistani passport alone. The family had to board the next flight back to Washington. On their arrival, CBP naturally wanted to know why they had been turned away and why Mansoor didn't have her green card.

But things took a weirder turn after agents told Imam he had been "flagged" for undisclosed reasons, pulled him into a separate room, and began questioning him about his social media use and group chats, according to the lawsuit. (Imam tells Reason that they asked about group chats in general, not any specific group chat.) When agents asked for the password to Imam's phone, he told them that he uses the phone to communicate with and manage cases for patients at the rehab facility where he works. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) strictly prevents doctors and other medical staff from sharing patient data without consent, so Imam asked to speak to a lawyer.

"Your lawyer cannot do anything. We are the authorities at the border," Imam recalls one agent saying. A supervisor then told the couple that CBP could take all of their electronics the "easy way or the hard way," and that the devices could take months to get back, Imam and Mansoor claim.

CBP's own internal policy says that devices should "ordinarily" be held for less than five days. The same policy includes vague guidelines for dealing with medical information: "Possibly sensitive information, such as medical records and work-related information carried by journalists, shall be handled in accordance with any applicable federal law and CBP policy." Imam says that the CBP agents claimed to have software for filtering out HIPAA-protected data.

After four hours in detention, CBP took the family's phones and laptops and let them go. The next day, Imam got an email stating, "We regret to inform you that your membership in Global Entry has been revoked for the following reason(s): You do not meet the Trusted Traveler standard." In addition to both Imam and Mansoor losing valuable work data, the lawsuit argues, Imam is now unable to prescribe certain psychiatric medications to his patients, because of federal regulations that require phone verification.

The lawsuit demands the return of the devices and data under Rule 41(g) of federal criminal procedures, which requires the government to hand back property that is no longer necessary for a criminal investigation. ADC has also filed these motions in Shehadeh and Blumenthal's cases. (CBP gave back Blumenthal and Shehadeh's phones almost immediately afterward, but ADC is continuing to press for records of what they did to those phones in custody.) Younes filed a brief on Blumenthal's behalf in support of an upcoming Supreme Court case over whether CBP can continue these electronic searches.

"The devices are neither contraband nor subject to forfeiture, and, to Plaintiffs' knowledge, there is no pending criminal investigation, criminal prosecution, or warrant authorizing their continued seizure or search," Imam's lawsuit states. "The Fourth Amendment does not permit the border-search exception to become a means of coercing compliance through the threatened or actual confiscation of travelers' personal property."

The post Border Cops Seize Nurse's Phone Filled With Psychiatric Patient Information appeared first on Reason Magazine.

One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.

It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.

"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.

U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.

A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.

Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.

The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."

Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.

The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.

Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.

"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.

Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.

The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.

But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.

"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media. 

Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.

The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.

But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.

"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about." 

The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The Trump administration's attempts to fast-track construction of the president's long-promised border wall through Texas' remote Big Bend region have ground to a halt amid fierce opposition, protests, and legal challenges from landowners and conservation groups.

A federal judge on Wednesday released an opinion explaining her decision to issue a preliminary injunction blocking border wall construction through the Big Bend area. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone found that the plaintiffs, which included the Center for Biological Diversity and several longtime residents of the region, had shown a substantial threat of irreparable harm if the construction project is allowed to continue.

The Trump administration wants to spend $7.5 billion building additional security infrastructure along a 500-mile stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border running through the Big Bend region, which includes Big Bend National Park. The federal government began sending threatening letters to property owners announcing its intent to acquire necessary pieces of their land this summer, and it waived several environmental regulations, allowing it to put bulldozers on the ground inside the national park by September.

However, numerous groups and local landowners say the border wall project will alter their way of life and permanently scar one of the most rugged and pristine landscapes in the country. The project attracted bipartisan criticism and protests.

Cardone also found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin exceeded his authority when he issued environmental waivers for the project.

The injunction is a temporary reprieve for property owners such as David Keller, an archaeologist and part-time river guide on the Rio Grande River. The original plans for the border wall expansion would have cut through Keller's 10-acre property near Redford, Texas, putting a 30-foot-tall wall on the levee that sits between the river and the rest of his land.

Keller says the Trump administration gravely underestimated how much anger its tactics and attitude would generate.

"It's a level of arrogance—they're just used to being able to bulldoze over people," David Keller says. "They were moving forward as if they weren't expecting any resistance, but boy, they're due for a wakeup call. And they're having it right now."

Keller is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against the DHS by Conserve Big Bend, a coalition of landowners, conservationists, river tour guides, researchers, and other affected parties.

Keller says he's loved wild, open country since he was a child, and as soon as he saw the region in the 1990s, he decided he would find a way to live and work there, which he's done for the past 25 years. "It's visually magnificent," Keller says. "It's incredible. It's like no other place I'd ever seen. It's one of the last unspoiled places remaining in the lower 48."

Keller says it's where he plans on being buried, too, although these days he's unsure whether to say "plans" or "planned." The proposed border construction is an existential threat to the life he's built, he says, and if the wall goes up, he'd likely move.

"I didn't come down here to live in a cage," Keller says.

The proposed border wall would not only block access to the river for farmers, ranchers, and outdoors enthusiasts along the river, as well as block the view into Mexico, it would wreck "the whole feeling of the place, the historical cross-border culture that we've developed," Keller says.

So far, the federal government has not tried to seize any private property in the Big Bend region through eminent domain, although it sent letters to property owners this summer requesting access to survey their land and warning them that it held the option to invoke eminent domain if they did not quickly sell.

Both Keller's and the Center for Biological Diversity's lawsuits argue that the department's justification for building and expediting additional border infrastructure in the Big Bend Region are factually and legally incorrect. The DHS determined that the sector of the border is an "area of high illegal entry."

However, despite making up roughly a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, the Big Bend sector only accounted for between 0.3 percent and 2.2 percent of total border-wide arrests over the past 30 years.

Cardone cited the low apprehension numbers in her finding that Mullin exceeded his authority to issue the waivers.

"The unrebutted evidence shows that the Big Bend Sector is, by far, the sector with the lowest rate of migrant apprehensions along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, both in terms of gross totals and apprehensions per mile of border," Cardone wrote. "Therefore, if the Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry, so is every other sector, and the waiver authority would apply to the entire U.S.-Mexico border."

The post Landowners in Texas' Big Bend Region Fight Trump Administration's Attempts To Seize Land for Border Wall appeared first on Reason Magazine.

There are more than 800 surveillance towers located along U.S. borders, a number that is expected to triple in the next decade. These towers, according to a government accountability report, “detect items of interest, such as people.” But interest can be fickle. As part of “Dying on Camera,” a sprawling package of features co-published by the MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego, Lillian Perlmutter reports on the death of Graciela Gómez Hernández, one among hundreds of migrants whose final moments seem as though they should have been witnessed. “The proximity of so many deaths to high-resolution cameras leaves two distinct possibilities,” Perlmutter writes. “Either the system didn’t detect these people in distress, or it did detect them—and officials offered no response. “

Surveillance towers have proliferated in recent years, as contractors added newer camera systems that use artificial intelligence to distinguish border-crossers from other people and animals, and track their movements, at an overall cost of more than a billion dollars. Yet as the cameras scan the terrain, migrants continue to die in plain sight. 

For decades, one of the oddest spots on the world’s political map was a patch of farmland roughly the size of a soccer pitch. It was called Dahala Khagrabari (enclave number 51) and it belonged to India. It sat inside a piece of Bangladesh, which lay inside a pocket of Indian territory, which was itself […]

A ride from Tangier, the largest city in northern Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta takes less than two hours. The border crossing has its own, sleepier rhythm, quite different from the tourist-driven bustle of Tangier. In Ceuta, traders run their errands, Morocco-based expats make visa runs and Spanish people catch ferries to the mainland. On most days, the border crossing seems almost ordinary. The fences, though menacing and topped with razor wire, are less imposing up close and officers make small talk with the expats waiting to get their visas stamped. 

Then there are those days when the routine collapses and Ceuta becomes the center of Europe’s migration debate. 

The territory is a geographic and political paradox. Despite falling under Spain’s — and the European Union’s — jurisdiction, it sits on the northern edge of Africa, surrounded by Morocco and separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an entry point to Europe, yet not fully part of the Schengen zone, requiring additional immigration checks for travelers crossing to the mainland. 

When more than 60,000 people — mostly Moroccan men and teenagers — rushed into Ceuta (almost doubling the coastal city’s population), the images reverberated across Europe. There seemed to be no dramatic buildup to the incident, nor any obvious explanation why thousands of people chose that day to make their way to Spain. 

Europe’s far-right politicians seized the narrative, portraying the influx as an imminent invasion, warning that the men were on their way to “Calais” and “Germany.” Italy temporarily suspended the Schengen free movement regime with Spain, meaning travellers arriving by sea and air would now be subject to border checks. Spain threatened to take “proportional measures” in response and did so at midnight on August 8, when it imposed similar checks for visitors from Italy. 

The standoff between European governments — led by socialist Pedro Sánchez in Spain and conservative Giorgia Meloni in Italy — is not simply a test for European border security. Instead, what transpired in Ceuta poses bigger questions about the shifting nature of state sovereignty itself: How are we to understand borders, if they’re shaped by forces beyond the state’s reach? 

Borders are not just lines separating geographic entities. They are systems built on surveillance, diplomatic bargains and digital networks. Ceuta is the place where all three converge. Its borders, already protected by the sea, have been fortified with steel, outsourced through diplomacy and tested by coordinated rumors.

Steel

The crossings into the enclave are blocked by a multi-layered barrier of fences and wire. Morocco administers a fence separating it from the neutral area between the two countries. Two fences on the Spanish-controlled territory follow, creating an enclosure monitored by the Spanish Civil Guard. The physical infrastructure is reinforced with motion sensors, thermal and CCTV cameras, maritime communication systems and facial recognition technology. 

Even the sea has now been incorporated into the border system. Just three days after the Ceuta border chaos, Spanish authorities installed a 500-metre floating barrier and anchored naval buoys to create another monitored enclosure. 

The EU has funded most of the fortifications. The Border Violence Monitoring Network’s report says that since the construction of Ceuta’s border barrier in the 1990s, the EU has spent tens of millions of dollars to make the Spanish-Moroccan frontier more secure, technologically up-to-date and heavily surveilled. With the recent mass crossing, Spain will now receive additional emergency financial aid. 

Yet, the architecture of physical surveillance, built and re-built with European money for decades, cannot prevent the human cost of attempting to cross a border. In Ceuta alone, at least 100 people died according to local authorities. “The rationale behind increasing surveillance is that you'll be able to save lives and smash the [people trafficking] gangs, right?” asked Nathan Akehurst, who has written about Ceuta’s border for Jacobin. “Where was that in this case?” 

Diplomacy

Akehurst’s question touches upon the human-centered rationale for heavy border surveillance. But there is also a political one. It is not only Spain, as a EU member, that receives funds to manage migration. Morocco has received €427 million since 2015, for migration-related expenses, including technology and training. That’s part of Europe’s wider strategy of border externalization, a practice where Europe moves border control beyond its own territory. 

The practice has been around for decades, but went into overdrive after 2015, when approximately 1.3 million people, mostly from Syria, came to the continent seeking asylum. Many of them reached Europe through Turkey, prompting the EU to strike a deal with Ankara: €6 billion in funds, visa liberalization and EU-ascension negotiations in exchange for stricter border controls and curbing irregular arrivals to Greece. The EU also agreed to resettle within Europe one Syrian from Turkey for every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greece. But by 2020, when the EU failed to resettle Syrians, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared he would no longer prevent migrants from crossing Turkey en route to the EU. 

“Border externalization is basically paying other countries, but also subjecting them, through a carrot and stick approach, to performing functions that are usually performed by a state itself at their borders,” explained Josephine Solanki from the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think tank. It leaves space for leaders like Erdoğan, Solanki added, to bargain for influence by turning migrants “into political leverage.”

The cost of outsourcing borders is not just material. It is measured in control that Europe cedes to the foreign governments it relies on for migration policy enforcement. 

In Ceuta, migrants claimed local authorities did not stop them from crossing the border. A young Moroccan man told the New York Times a day after the event: “They opened the border and let everyone go by.”

Border outsourcing agreements were made, among others, with authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where EU funds were used to detain migrants and quell domestic protests, rights organizations say. Alliances with “deeply unreliable and authoritarian actors” in the name of stability, said Nathan Akehurst, “is short-termist, insane and loses Europe any credibility it has left.” These alliances also allow Europe to “shift the blame to the Moroccans, the Eastern Libyans, the Turkish or whoever decides to take advantage of that moment.”

Rumors 

It is yet to be revealed who, if anyone, has taken advantage of the mass crossing into Ceuta. Local and international media have uncovered now-deleted posts that shared tips on routes and equipment for the journey. One of the main networks was called Hrig Sebta network — “Sebta” being the Arabic name of Ceuta and “hrig” being the Maghrebi term for undocumented migrants, literally referencing the burning of identity papers. 

In the wake of Ceuta, European ministers pledged to tackle online misinformation to avoid migration crises, but remained cautious when asked about thousands of posts reportedly linked to Russia. Other theories attributed the crossing to Morocco’s tensions with Spain over its closer ties with Algeria, or to Spain’s position on Palestine.

But those rumors, and what appears to be a weeks-long coordinated online campaign behind them, reveal something deeply human that fences can’t deter: movement that is spurred by hopes for a better life. 

“[The crossing] would have happened anyway at some point,“ Akehurst argues. “There would have been a crossing because all of the circumstances that generate that are already there before someone with a twitter account throws a match on the fire.”

Yet, let’s pause at the match. It’s not about someone with a social media profile creating chain messages. It is about the ecosystem that can jeopardize borders by creating information flows, turning rumors into perceived opportunities.

Moroccan newspaper TeleQuel already published a report about social media posts amplifying the next hrig — another attempted crossing into Ceuta — on August 15. 

When packaged to a hungry audience, rumors carry the currency of truth. They’ve driven migration long before social media was even conceptualized. Now those rumors speed through digital space owned and operated by private companies not prone to accountability and sitting well outside the reach of any single state.

And the EU has understood that for years. “It is necessary to structure the information space, as we have organized in the past the territorial space, the maritime space and the air space,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU said back in 2018. He warned about Big Tech companies treating digital space as a no-man’s-land that they would write rules for. 

The no man’s land between Morocco and Spain appears calmer now. But the turmoil of the crossing revealed a new, digital dimension to border governance. Information has always found a way to spread; digital platforms have given it new channels: ones which allow those behind the information to remain faceless, while the information itself passes from screen to screen. It reaches a boiling point, spills over from the digital space and then can be disappeared, even before anyone has had a moment to scroll back.

The post The manufactured crisis of Ceuta appeared first on Coda Story.

Brussels (enr) – The European Union’s migration commissioner has renewed his call for Germany to gradually end controls at its internal borders, pointing to falling numbers of irregular arrivals and the bloc’s new asylum rules.

It was now time to gradually abolish internal border controls, Magnus Brunner told members of the European Newsroom (enr) network in Brussels.

The Austrian commissioner said the EU’s external borders were better protected and that irregular crossings had fallen sharply. Frontex recorded about one-third fewer irregular crossings at the EU’s external borders in the first half of 2026 than in the same period last year.

The EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum also took effect on June 12. Brunner said member states had begun implementing the rules and that the bloc was already seeing progress.

He welcomed steps by individual countries to ease controls. Checks on the border between Germany and Luxembourg on the Trier motorway have been lifted, he said. He also cited the suspension of controls between Austria and Slovenia.

Germany has had checks at its land borders since September 2024. Former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ordered them, and her successor, Alexander Dobrindt, intensified them in May 2025. Dobrindt has repeatedly extended the measures, which are currently due to remain in place until September.

Brunner also defended the EU’s new Entry/Exit System, known as EES. The digital system records the entry and departure of travellers from outside the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

He acknowledged that the system had caused problems at some airports, including in Greece and Portugal, but said: “The system itself works very, very well.”

The system has faced criticism over long queues. The Airports Council International Europe has reported waiting times of up to five hours and missed connecting flights.

Brunner said professional truck drivers from the Western Balkans faced a particular problem because they can currently stay in the EU for no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. He proposed that EU member states and Western Balkan countries negotiate long-term visas on a bilateral basis.

Warsaw (dpa) – The number of irregular border crossings into the European Union fell by more than a quarter in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to figures from the EU border control authority Frontex.

The Warsaw-based EU agency said on Thursday it had registered just under 178,000 crossing attempts last year, the lowest number since 2021.

Frontex described the decline as a significant development, but also warned that the situation at the EU’s external borders remains uncertain. “The trend is moving in the right direction, but risks do not disappear,” said Frontex Director Hans Leijtens.

He said that Frontex’s close cooperation with governments and partners in countries outside the EU has yielded good results.

According to Frontex, last year there were significantly fewer irregular attempts to enter the EU on the West African route (down 63 percent), on the Western Balkans route (down 42 percent) and on the EU’s land border with Belarus (down 37 percent).

Frontex attributed the decline on the Western Balkans route to improved security measures and cooperation with EU candidate country Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Many migrants from Egypt, Bangladesh and Afghanistan

Most of those registered by Frontex trying to make irregular border crossings have Bangladeshi, Egyptian or Afghan nationality. The most frequently used migration route into the EU therefore remains across the Mediterranean, which accounted for almost a third of all irregular border crossings in 2025, with the Libya-Italy route being the most common.

There was hardly any change on the Mediterranean route overall compared to the same period last year: Frontex recorded 66,328 attempts to enter the EU over the sea in 2025 – 1 percent fewer than in the previous year.

Looking only at the eastern Mediterranean, the number of irregular border crossings fell by 27 percent. However, Frontex recorded three times as many attempts to enter the EU from eastern Libya to the Greek island of Crete compared to 2024.

From Algeria to Spain, the numbers increased by 14 percent in 2025.

In contrast, there was a slight decrease in crossings to the United Kingdom. The number of attempts to cross the English Channel fell by 3 percent compared to the previous year. (15 January)