Ceuta: Digital Mobilization and the Jihadist Threat

Cristina Di Silvio

Cristina Di Silvio English Contributions Geopolitica NOTIZIE RIVISTA

Ceuta: Digital Mobilization and the Jihadist Threat

11 Agosto 202625 Agosto 2026

by Cristina Di Silvio

Migration Pressure, Disinformation and the Vulnerability of Europe’s Border Between Security, Radicalization and the Protection of Rights

Abstract: The migration crisis affecting Ceuta in the summer of 2026 highlights the growing interdependence between cross-border mobility, digital platforms and European security, placing border management within a space in which the physical and informational dimensions are increasingly difficult to separate. The circulation through social networks and messaging systems of information concerning possible collective border crossings, the presence of networks whose attribution remains uncertain, the activity of smugglers, and the vulnerability of individuals exposed to processes of radicalization create a context in which the terrorist threat must be assessed without conflating migration with jihadism or turning investigative indicators into evidence of unproven responsibility. Ceuta thus becomes a laboratory of contemporary European security, where border protection, the right to asylum, the protection of minors, anti-trafficking measures, intelligence, the Digital Services Act and the prevention of radicalization converge within the same crisis. The border no longer coincides solely with the territorial line separating two legal orders, but extends into the digital space in which perceptions, information and mobilization can anticipate and amplify physical events, requiring European institutions to develop a capacity for governance based simultaneously on prevention, proportionality and a rigorous distinction between risk, investigative hypothesis and established fact.

Keywords: #Ceuta #Migration #EuropeanSecurity #Borders #Jihadism #Radicalization #Terrorism #DigitalMobilization #Disinformation #Intelligence #BorderSecurity #Frontex #Europol #DigitalServicesAct #Morocco #Spain #FundamentalRights #HybridWarfare #CristinaDiSilvio #EthicaSocietas #EthicaSocietasReview #ScientificJournal #SocialSciences #ethicasocietasupli

versione italiana

A New Phase in the Ceuta Crisis

The crisis in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the North African coast and an external land border of the European Union, has entered a phase in which the management of migration pressure is increasingly overlapping with broader questions of security, intelligence and governance of the digital sphere. With 15 August only days away—a date circulated through some social-media channels as the possible occasion for a new collective attempt to cross the border—security authorities are assessing a scenario that concerns not only the capacity to contain renewed flows, but also the possibility that a numerically significant and difficult-to-attribute mobilization could be exploited by radicalized individuals, criminal networks or jihadist milieus seeking to enter the enclave, conduct propaganda activities or identify people particularly vulnerable to radicalization.[1]

Terminological caution therefore becomes an essential part of the security analysis itself. To speak of a jihadist risk does not mean asserting that migrant arrivals are being organized by terrorist groups, nor that digital mobilization can be attributed to an established jihadist command structure. It means, rather, recognizing that the conditions generated by mass movement, difficulties in identification, overcrowding within reception facilities and the overlap of different digital networks may create opportunities that can also be exploited by actors entirely unrelated to the motivations of those attempting to cross the border. The quality of institutional analysis is measured precisely by its ability to keep these dimensions distinct.

Risk and Evidence: The Distinction That Must Guide Intelligence

The information currently available does not allow it to be stated that the mobilization was organized by a terrorist group, nor does it demonstrate the existence of direction attributable to the Moroccan government or its security services. The picture described by investigative sources is instead one of a complex and largely decentralized digital campaign characterized by the circulation of messages, dates, images and calls for mobilization whose authorship cannot be attributed with sufficient certainty to any specific actor.[2]

The distinction between a risk indicator and evidence of an operational connection is essential, particularly when the phenomenon under examination involves terrorism, intelligence and interstate relations. The presence of a foreign telephone number in a chat, the simultaneous participation of a user in several groups, or the existence of previous jihadist activity in the same geographical area cannot automatically be assembled into a causal chain. Such elements may justify further investigation, but they acquire operational significance only when placed within a coherent network of corroborating evidence. The task of intelligence is precisely to transform dispersed information into assessment without confusing the plausibility of a threat with proof of its actual existence.

Mobilization in the Digital Sphere

According to media reports based on security sources, the attention of the authorities is focused on a communications ecosystem in which TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp and other digital tools allow information to move rapidly from public spaces into more restricted channels, creating a networked structure in which the same users may appear simultaneously in several groups.[3] The identification of telephone numbers apparently linked to different countries naturally broadens the scope of investigative interest, but, taken in isolation, does not make it possible to establish with certainty the nationality of the users, their actual geographical location or their effective role in organizing border crossings.

It is precisely this fluidity that makes the case significant. A network does not require a hierarchical structure in order to produce real-world mobilization, because sufficiently attractive information can be replicated, reinterpreted and redistributed by thousands of users without necessarily being controlled by a single actor. The transition from communication to physical mobilization therefore alters traditional security categories: an event may be amplified by actors who did not initiate it, while disinformation, unfounded expectations and claims concerning an alleged opening of the border may contribute to transforming a digital message into a collective movement.

Migrant-smuggling organizations also operate within this space, and for them uncertainty constitutes an economic resource. Every expectation that a border might temporarily become easier to cross can stimulate demand for irregular passage and turn the virality of online communication into demand for criminal services.[4] Digital information therefore becomes relevant not because it necessarily proves the existence of central coordination, but because it alters the environment within which actors pursuing profoundly different interests operate.

The Precedent of Late July

The sensitivity of the current scenario derives above all from what occurred at the end of July, when Ceuta experienced migration pressure of exceptional proportions. The figures changed over the course of the crisis, partly because of differences in the methods used to count arrivals and returns. Initial reports referred to approximately 50,000 crossings and more than 48,000 returns to Morocco, while later assessments indicated more than 70,000 irregular entries during the crisis and a very high number of subsequent returns. The progressive evolution of the data itself suggests the need to avoid treating any single figure as definitive unless accompanied by a precise indication of the time and methodology of measurement.

The exceptional scale of the event placed immediate pressure on the city’s reception infrastructure. By 29 July, the Centro de Estancia Temporal de Inmigrantes (CETI) had already exhausted its 512 available places, while hundreds of people were waiting outside the facility. The crisis of the following days further overwhelmed a system that was clearly not designed to accommodate an influx of such magnitude.

The presence of minors was particularly sensitive. Spanish sources published in the days immediately preceding this article reported approximately 1,400 minors identified, forcing the authorities to address simultaneously the requirements of identification, assistance, protection and possible family reunification. In this area, border protection directly intersects with legal obligations towards vulnerable persons, showing how difficult it is to draw a sharp distinction between security and the humanitarian dimension.

Ceuta and Jihadist Vulnerability

It is within this context that the issue of terrorism becomes relevant. Ceuta has distinctive geopolitical characteristics: a Spanish and European territory located on the North African coast, it constitutes an immediate point of contact between different political, social and security systems, close to areas in which Spanish and Moroccan authorities have conducted operations against radicalized networks and individuals over the years.

The dossier cited by media sources pays particular attention to the area of Fnideq, on the Moroccan side of the border, also in light of previous counterterrorism operations and cross-border links identified in other investigations.[7] None of this, however, establishes any equation between migrants and terrorism. The concern of the security authorities is different: that within a mass movement marked by difficulties of identification and severe operational congestion, a very small number of actors unrelated to the migration phenomenon might exploit the circumstances for their own purposes.

Risk therefore becomes a function of the interaction between mass mobility, organized crime, propaganda, radicalization, disinformation and identification capacity, rather than a quality attributable to migrants as such. This distinction is not merely ethically necessary but operationally indispensable, because a strategy that treated thousands of people as a single category of risk would inevitably disperse investigative resources and make it more difficult to identify precisely those individuals who genuinely warrant attention.

Spain’s Response and the Reinforcement of the Border

Spain’s decision to reinforce its security apparatus must therefore be understood as going beyond an ordinary response to migration pressure. The deployment of armed forces and security bodies, combined with surveillance systems, drones, naval assets and monitoring technologies, responds to the need to maintain control simultaneously at the territorial, maritime and informational levels, while the city also deals with the social and administrative consequences of the influx.

The authorities have also increased staffing for crisis management. According to information released by the Spanish Government, the reinforcement has affected both administrative personnel and the Guardia Civil, while coordination with Morocco continues regarding returns and the management of minors in accordance with the procedures established by law.

Border security, however, cannot be assessed solely by counting personnel or strengthening physical barriers. A collective movement fuelled by digital information requires anticipatory capacity, monitoring of online campaigns, information-sharing among public authorities and international coordination, according to a logic in which border protection begins long before people physically reach the boundary itself.

Ceuta and Melilla: A Distributed European Border

The monitored digital mobilization does not appear to concern Ceuta alone, as some messages have also begun referring to Melilla, Spain’s other autonomous city on the African continent.[10] The possibility that pressure could be distributed across several points significantly changes operational management, requiring the Spanish authorities to consider the southern border of the Union not as a single crisis location but as a territorial system potentially exposed to simultaneous or diversionary dynamics.

The date of 15 August should therefore not be interpreted as a fixed appointment, as if it were a formally organized gathering. The networked nature of communication makes it possible for the date to be brought forward, postponed, replicated or simply used to attract the attention of the authorities, while different groups may act according to autonomous schedules and methods.[11] Temporal uncertainty does not diminish the security problem; on the contrary, it increases the need for surveillance capable of distinguishing informational noise from genuinely predictive signals.

Europe’s Digital Border

It is through this transformation that the Ceuta case assumes significance for the European Union as a whole. The contemporary border no longer coincides solely with a fence, a crossing point or a territorial line, because the capacity to influence perceptions and behaviour through digital platforms can precede the physical event and shape its scale, direction and timing.

From this perspective, the Digital Services Act provides a European framework for addressing systemic risks generated by large platforms, imposing specific obligations regarding transparency, risk assessment and mitigation. The existence of a regulatory framework does not of course imply that every piece of migration-related content can or should be removed, but it places the relationship between freedom of expression, information manipulation, public security and platform responsibility at the centre of the debate. In recent months, the European Commission has maintained intensive oversight of DSA compliance, including with regard to TikTok.

The most innovative aspect lies precisely here: the physical border is preceded by an informational border in which authentic and false content, testimony, propaganda, operational guidance and disinformation compete to shape individual decisions. Governing a European border therefore also means understanding the information ecosystem capable of moving thousands of people towards it.

Hybrid Warfare and the Need for Caution in Attribution

The crisis has also produced interpretations invoking the concept of hybrid warfare and possible international responsibility. The initiative attributed to the organization Iustitia Europa, aimed at requesting an assessment by the International Criminal Court, must nevertheless be placed within its correct legal context: the submission of a complaint, report or request for investigation does not prove the existence of international responsibility, nor does it allow a deliberate Moroccan strategy of destabilization to be inferred.[14]

The concept of hybrid warfare itself requires caution, as it risks becoming so broad as to encompass virtually any phenomenon in which migration pressure, digital communication and diplomatic tension overlap. To speak rigorously of state instrumentalization of migration flows would require evidence capable of demonstrating intentional decision-making, coordination capacity and a coercive purpose. In the absence of such evidence, the concept may constitute an analytical or investigative hypothesis, but not an established legal or factual characterization.

Caution in attribution is, moreover, an essential component of security. Effective intelligence assessment must be able to consider high-impact, low-probability scenarios while simultaneously making explicit the level of reliability of the available information, distinguishing what is established, what appears probable and what remains merely possible.

Beyond the Opposition Between Migration and Security

The Ceuta case above all demonstrates the inadequacy of the traditional opposition between migration policies and security policies. A crisis of this scale simultaneously presents a humanitarian dimension, a public-order problem, identification requirements, international protection obligations, the presence of minors, a potential market for smugglers, possible vulnerabilities to radicalization and a digital ecosystem capable of influencing human behaviour.

Governing these phenomena therefore means avoiding two opposite errors: denying that a mass flow can generate specific security vulnerabilities, or using those vulnerabilities to portray migration indiscriminately as a terrorist threat. Democratic security requires precisely the opposite: the capacity to distinguish levels of risk, concentrate investigative activity on genuinely relevant individuals and, at the same time, guarantee the protections due to those who present no security concern.

Border protection, the right to asylum, protection of minors, action against human trafficking, prevention of radicalization and counter-disinformation measures are therefore not mutually exclusive policies, but components of the same institutional capacity.

A Crisis That Runs Through Society

The pressure generated by the events does not concern state institutions alone, because Ceuta is simultaneously experiencing a crisis in everyday life. Demonstrations organized by residents calling for a greater state presence, enhanced border security and solutions for those remaining within the enclave show how the effects of the emergency are distributed across the entire social fabric, affecting services, public spaces, welfare facilities and relations between communities.[15]

The participation of people belonging to the different religious traditions present in the city assumes particular significance in this context, as it conveys the image of a community that cannot be reduced to a polarization between residents and migrants and that is attempting to preserve coexistence under conditions of exceptional pressure.

For this reason as well, crisis management cannot be entrusted exclusively to a security-based approach. Security that disregards social cohesion risks creating new vulnerabilities, just as humanitarian policy that fails to take account of identification and prevention requirements may weaken the public consensus necessary to sustain precisely the most advanced forms of protection.

A European Test Case

The real test will not consist solely in preventing a possible new mass crossing, but in doing so without transforming an investigative risk into a political prophecy, while at the same time preventing the exceptional nature of the crisis from being exploited by smugglers, criminal networks, radicalized individuals or information-manipulation campaigns.

Ceuta demonstrates that European security now operates at the intersection of territory and cyberspace, human mobility and intelligence analysis, border protection and the safeguarding of fundamental rights. The line separating the European Union from the African continent is certainly still made up of checkpoints, territorial waters, fences and surveillance systems, but it is preceded by another frontier—less visible but no less decisive—formed by platforms, messages, images, narratives and networks through which collective expectations and individual decisions are shaped.

It is precisely within this overlapping space that Ceuta acquires the character of a European laboratory: not because it demonstrates a convergence between migration and terrorism, but because it forces institutions to govern simultaneously phenomena that may interact without coinciding. The challenge is not to make security and migration indistinguishable, but to build a sufficiently sophisticated model of security capable of distinguishing between them even when the crisis itself tends to bring them together.

Notes

[1] Canettieri, S. (2026, August 9). “Migranti, il rapporto degli 007: ‘Il rischio terrorismo a Ceuta è concreto. Regia dietro gli arrivi’.” Corriere della Sera.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.; on European action against migrant smuggling, see also the European Union documents cited in the bibliography.

[5] Estimates concerning the crossings at the end of July were progressively updated. Initial reports referred to approximately 50,000 entries and 48,300 returns; later Spanish sources referred to more than 70,000 entries. For this reason, the figures should be interpreted in relation to the time and method of measurement.

[6] On overcrowding at the CETI and the presence of minors, see EFE, 29 July 2026, and subsequent communications from the Spanish Government.

[7] Canettieri, cited above.

[8] Information released by Spanish sources regarding the reinforcement of the security apparatus in the enclave.

[9] On control measures and the strengthening of the security forces, see the communications issued by the Spanish authorities and the media sources cited above.

[10] Agenzia Nova. (2026, August 10). “Migranti: allerta in Marocco per nuovi appelli verso Ceuta e Melilla.”

[11] Ibid.

[12] European Commission. (2026). Documentation on the implementation of the Digital Services Act and the obligations of online platforms regarding systemic risks.

[13] Agenzia Giornalistica Italia. (2026, August 10). “Ceuta: Brunner, in contatto con Frontex, Europol, EU Asylum Agency.”

[14] Adnkronos/Europa Press. (2026, August 10). “Migranti: Ceuta, partito spagnolo chiede a CPI di indagare su Marocco.”

[15] AskaNews. (2026, August 10). “Ceuta, migliaia in piazza per una soluzione alla crisi migranti.”

Essential Bibliography

Agenzia Giornalistica Italia. (2026, August 10). Ceuta: Brunner, in contatto con Frontex, Europol, EU Asylum Agency.

Agenzia Nova. (2026, August 10). Ceuta: rapporto sicurezza, situazione resta critica, fino a 11 mila persone ancora nell’exclave.

Agenzia Nova. (2026, August 10). Migranti: allerta in Marocco per nuovi appelli verso Ceuta e Melilla.

AskaNews. (2026, August 10). Ceuta, migliaia in piazza per una soluzione alla crisi migranti.

Canettieri, S. (2026, August 9). “Migranti, il rapporto degli 007: ‘Il rischio terrorismo a Ceuta è concreto. Regia dietro gli arrivi’.” Corriere della Sera.

European Commission. (2026). Digital Services Act: Documentation on Systemic Risks, Platform Obligations and Transparency of Digital Services.

Council of the European Union. (2025). Documentation on Combating Migrant Smuggling and Strengthening Cooperation Between Europol, Frontex and Eurojust.

EFE. (2026, July 29). Más de 400 personas esperan a las puertas del CETI de Ceuta.

Ministerio del Interior – Gobierno de España. (2026). Balances e informes sobre inmigración irregular y control de fronteras.