The illegality of border rejection and “hot” refoulement in front of the European Court of Human Rights and the Spanish Constitutional Court

Abstract

The ECHR case N.D. and N.T. v. Spain of 13 February 2020 and Constitutional Court case 172/2020 of 19 November 2020 allow, on the basis of certain conditions, a practice that is illegal in constitutional legal systems, the return of foreigners by “de facto means” without any legal guarantee.
Based on these rulings, the figure of refoulement regulated in Spanish legislation will be analysed in
order to subsequently verify whether the actions carried out in Ceuta and Melilla by the state security forces and bodies comply with the human rights regulations set out in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its protocols, as well as in the Spanish Constitution.