On Aug. 2, as many as 70,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish territory of Ceuta—a city of 84,000 on a northern African peninsula that adjoins the nation of Morocco—and made international headlines. The majority of the migrants were Moroccan, but the group also included migrants from all parts of Africa. According to the Associated Press, at least 72 people died in the attempt, having to cross a water barrier to reach Spanish soil. Many have already returned to Morocco.

Far-right commentators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic immediately jumped on the crisis, which is not unprecedented, to blame it on Spain’s so-called liberal migration policies, particularly the recent decision to give legal status to undocumented workers in the country. They called the policies a magnet for irregular migration, an argument often used to oppose immigration reform in the United States.

While Spain’s migration policies might have played some factor in the migration movement, the fuller explanation is much more complicated—and harder to address. It was actually a result of a set of factors that are unfortunately common all around the world: economic inequality; political, cultural and religious repression; regional conflicts; and climate change. These have created a perfect storm of forces pushing human beings to take life-threatening journeys to survive. 

These forces have been exacerbated by harmful policies adopted in the recent past by both the United States and Europe, causing a surge in irregular migration and in the deaths of migrants both on land and at sea. 

For example, a steep reduction in international assistance, both from the United States and Europe, has led to food and health care insecurity throughout Africa and other parts of the world. As we know, the United States has virtually gutted international aid, while Europe has cut its global contributions significantly. 

The lack of resources in developing countries has, in turn, contributed to an increase in regional conflicts, which have displaced more than 45.7 million. The world’s largest humanitarian crisis, in Sudan, has alone displaced nearly 14 million people, while other wars are raging in the Congo, the Central Sahel region, Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan. This does not include the displacement caused by wars in the Middle East and, of course, Ukraine. Climate change has contributed to this lack of resources, as impoverished subsistence farmers have been unable to support themselves. At the end of April 2025, a record 122.1 million persons were displaced around the world.

To compound matters, governments have turned to even more restrictive border control and enforcement efforts, leading migrants into more dangerous journeys and a record number of migrant deaths. The European Union, for example, has concluded “externalization” agreements with all the countries along the northern coast of Africa, paying them to interdict and return migrants traveling through their countries. The United States has entered into similar agreements with countries in Latin America. The asylum systems in both Europe and the United States also have been severely weakened, with the United States turning asylum seekers away at the southern border and the European Union recently adopting a new agreement designed to return asylum seekers to third countries, known as “migration hubs,” in short order.

As a result, more than 35,000 migrants have lost their lives in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean since 2014, while over the past six months more than 500 Rohingya refugees have perished in the Indian Ocean. And over the past three decades as many as 10,000 migrants have died along the U.S.-Mexico border in their attempts to reach the United States. These tragic tallies record the human cost of the idea that migration can be halted solely by regulation or enforcement, leaving developed countries secure in their own borders without any obligation to those on the other side.

The fuel driving this perfect storm has been the dehumanization of migrants worldwide, which has created an environment that minimizes human life and has led to, as Pope Francis put it, a “globalization of indifference” to migrants. The Trump administration has led the parade, routinely invoking dehumanizing rhetoric toward immigrants, and Mr. Trump has infamously accused them of “poisoning the blood” of our country.

Pope Leo has called this environment a “globalization of powerlessness,” and has followed his predecessor’s lead in defending the human dignity of the migrant. His recent visits to the Spanish Canary Islands and to Lampedusa, Italy, to pray for migrants who have died at sea were a stark reminder of this reality.

As such, the crossing of tens of thousands of migrants into a Spanish territory in Morocco should not be interpreted as a product of so-called liberal migration policies, but as an alarm bell for a worsening global migration crisis and how the powerful nations of the world are contributing to it. The solution here is not more restrictions but instead the restoration of aid, the rebuilding of asylum systems and the end of deterrence-first enforcement policies that drive migrants toward deadlier migration routes.

In an interview, one of the Moroccan migrants who crossed into Ceuta was asked why he had taken the chance. He replied that he needed to survive. “We are human,” he stated. Too often these days the humanity of the migrant is ignored or forgotten, a point the church must continue to raise at the highest levels of power.

J. Kevin Appleby is a senior fellow for policy and communications for the Center for Migration Studies of New York, a member of the Scalabrini International Migration Network.