Spain's slow response to crisis in Ceuta leaves teen migrants on streets

CEUTA, Spain — Hundreds of teenage migrants lined up outside a church in Ceuta in early October, hoping Spain's visiting minister of youth would bring them some good news: passage to continental Europe or at least a spot in a shelter. For two months, they had slept on cardboard sheets and ripped sofas in squalid tent camps, or on the streets of the Spanish city in North Africa that juts into the Mediterranean like a thumb. On clear days, southern Spain is visible on the horizon. Among them was a 17-year-old aspiring model from northern Morocco. In late July, he crossed into Ceuta with around 80,000 others in what would become Spain’s deadliest border crisis. “Pray for me!” he told an Associated Press reporter. But instead, the teens were led down a steep hill to a soccer field so as not to overwhelm the minister. Within hours, many were back on the streets and hillsides. Another setback for the young migrants, the scene also illustrated the Spanish government’s slow, often improvised response to the migration crisis in the territory. Thousands of minors reached Ceuta alone and,