Illegal immigrants are now flying over Spain's fortified border fence into the enclave of Ceuta on paragliders supplied by people smugglers, and the Spanish government spent months denying it was happening.
A sub-Saharan migrant was filmed Saturday evening gliding from a Moroccan mountainside over the 20-foot border fence and touching down at the Benzu viewpoint in Ceuta, the tiny Spanish territory on the North African coast opposite Gibraltar. He disappeared moments after landing. Police have not found him.
One day earlier, a second sub-Saharan man attempted the same crossing near the Benzu breakwater and plunged into the Mediterranean. His body was pulled from the water around 8 a.m. Friday. The Civil Guard's own union called it the first documented death by this aerial route in Spain, a death, the union says, that Spain's Interior Ministry helped make possible by pretending the route did not exist.
The AUGC, the Civil Guard's union, posted video of the Saturday crossing on X alongside a blistering statement aimed at the government. The union said it had warned about paraglider entries back in January. Spain's Interior Ministry, the union wrote, "responded in writing to Congress that paraglider entries did not exist."
Then a man died trying one. Then another man succeeded.
Diego Madraza, the AUGC's spokesman, described the smuggling operation behind the flights. Migrants receive almost no preparation before being launched off a mountainside. Normal paragliding instruction runs 80 to 100 hours. The migrants get minutes.
"They have no flight training, sometimes they are given a course lasting barely a few minutes before taking off."
The takeoff point, according to the AUGC, is a mountain locals call "The dead woman," which connects the Moroccan neighborhood of Belyounech with the border perimeter near the Benzu breakwater. From there, a migrant with a paraglider can simply sail over the fence that stops everyone on foot.
Madraza added that a gang facilitating these crossings had recently been dismantled in Morocco. Moroccan police arrested five suspects last November after breaking up a network accused of training migrants to use paragliders to reach EU soil. The suspects came from different African countries.
But the crossings continued. Months before the November arrests, a man had been filmed flying over the border fence on a paraglider in what was described at the time as the first such crossing ever attempted between Morocco and Ceuta. All police found afterward was abandoned multi-colored paragliding gear in the undergrowth.
The AUGC's post on X did not hold back about the cost of official denial:
"Denying it does not make it disappear. It only prevents resources from being provided and surveillance measures from being adapted in time."
That line lands harder when set against the Interior Ministry's written statement to Congress that paraglider entries "did not exist." The union warned. The ministry denied. A man drowned. Another flew in unchallenged.
Madraza framed the problem in operational terms. The old enforcement model, watching the sea and the fence, no longer covers the threat.
"As soon as one door closes on them, another opens, so now detection can no longer be only be sea or land, but it can also be aerial."
The paraglider crossings are only one piece of a broader crisis in Ceuta. An estimated 72,000 migrants reached EU soil during a mass border breach late last month. The Civil Guard reportedly admitted in an internal report that the risk of a second mass attempt is real. A new crossing, heavily promoted on social media, is anticipated around August 15. The Civil Guard has prepared for the possibility that organizers could move the date up now that it is public.
Officials admit 2,500 irregular migrants remain in Ceuta, including roughly 1,000 children. Locals insist the real number is far higher. Dozens of young men, families, and children have been photographed sleeping on pavement on makeshift cardboard beds at an industrial estate. Near a temporary migrant holding center, camps built from bamboo and reeds line a beach. The Red Cross and the Sur Sur organization were distributing aid as recently as August 3.
The human consequences of the crisis showed up Friday morning in a Ceuta apartment building. Beatriz Ferron, 62, woke to find an unnamed Moroccan migrant in her bed in her fifth-floor flat. The man, wearing only underpants, had broken in. She started screaming. Police arrested him.
Hours later he was hauled before a court. He pleaded guilty to breaking and entering and received a 16-month prison sentence, immediately substituted for deportation and a five-year ban on entering Spain. An expulsion order was issued Saturday.
But the man already had a prior deportation order. A court in Valencia had issued an earlier removal order against him. He had three prior sex assault convictions in Spain. He was one of the migrants who had entered Ceuta during the mass border breach the previous month.
A man with three sexual assault convictions and an existing deportation order crossed into Ceuta in a mass breach, broke into an elderly woman's home, climbed into her bed, and the system's answer was another deportation order to replace the one that had already failed. Several girls who arrived in Ceuta during the breach have also reported being sexually assaulted, though the status of those complaints remains unclear.
The death near the Benzu breakwater was not the only recent fatality involving a person falling from the sky under circumstances tied to reckless decision-making. In a separate case in Britain, Fox News reported that an experienced 32-year-old British skydiver, Jade Damarell, died in April 2025 after deliberately failing to deploy her parachute, a death ruled a suicide by a coroner. Damarell had logged more than 500 successful jumps. The Ceuta migrant, by contrast, had minutes of instruction before being sent off a mountain by smugglers who collected their fee and vanished.
That gap captures the nature of the paraglider smuggling trade. An experienced skydiver with hundreds of jumps can still die in the air. A migrant with no training, strapped into gear by a criminal gang, has almost no margin for error. The Friday victim had none.
The Civil Guard is now watching the calendar. Social media posts have promoted August 15 as the date for a second mass border breach into Ceuta. The Civil Guard's internal report, as described in the press, acknowledges the risk is real. Officers are preparing for the possibility that organizers will move the date earlier now that it has become public.
Spain's Interior Ministry has not publicly responded to the AUGC's criticism, to the Friday drowning, or to the Saturday paraglider crossing. The ministry's January statement to Congress, that paraglider entries did not exist, remains its last known position on the subject.
Ceuta's border fence stands 20 feet high. It was built to stop people on foot. Smugglers looked at it and bought paragliders. The Spanish government looked at the paragliders and told Congress they weren't real. Now one migrant is dead, another is missing inside EU territory, and the next mass crossing is weeks away. Denial is not a border policy.
