Authorities intercepted a group of migrants who arrived by small, precarious vessels along the Alicante coast after navigating the open sea at the end of December. The individuals were detained by the National Police and described as involved in activities that supported illegal immigration patterns. Three people were placed in preventive detention and subsequently handed over to the guard court in Alicante for further proceedings.
One of the flagged vessels, a taxi boat, was observed offshore on December 28 by a police officer and a naval reconnaissance plane. Two migrants were rescued from the craft by the Helimer 215 Sea Rescue helicopter, with the operation coordinated by agents who then transferred the migrants to Alicante-Elche airport. The Immigration and Border Brigade UCRIF Group III, part of the Provincial Police, together with local teams, conducted the investigation and arrested one of the two migrants on charges of aiding illegal immigration and making threats.
Police records indicate that the taxi boat carried thirteen people in total, including two families and five boys. The journey proved to be physically exhausting for those on board, and the cost of the transfer was reported to be as high as 6,000 euros per person, reflecting the demand for a faster route into the peninsula.
knife attack
Other taxi boats involved in the crossing picked up a larger share of travelers, while the operator and another migrant who attempted to stab a teammate as he tried to board one of the boats that had received most of the passengers were left behind. Following the collapse of the flotilla, the boat drifted for eleven days, and the current carried the taxi boat from the coast near Almería to the Alicante region.
Meanwhile, another vessel with a 13-person capacity reached the port on December 27, at Barra Grande beach in Altea. Investigators from UCRIF, with assistance from the Alicante Red Cross, later confirmed that two migrants aboard the vessel had been the captains who had departed from the Algerian city. Both individuals were subsequently arrested and remanded to custody.
The trafficking network was alleged to have charged between 600 and 1,000 euros per person for the trip aboard a fiberglass boat roughly seven meters in length, lacking oars or proper rescue safety equipment.