The Socialist Parliamentary Group in the Cortes of Castilla y León has presented this Wednesday a Non-Legislative Proposal (PNL) with which it intends for the Board to guarantee that any test to determine the age of unaccompanied migrant minors is carried out strictly in accordance with the doctrine of the Supreme Court, "with individualized motivation and respect for the principle of proportionality".
The PSOE initiative also calls for these tests to be avoided systematically or indiscriminately and for a clear and accessible protocol to be developed and disseminated that sets out the objective criteria for resorting to them in specific cases.
The registered text also proposes that the regional Executive send detailed information to the Cortes every quarter on the tests carried out, their conclusions, associated costs, and judicial or Public Prosecutor's Office authorizations, as well as for personnel responsible for child protection to be specifically trained in the best interests of the child and applicable jurisprudence.
The PNL comes after the statements last Monday by the first vice-president of the Board and counselor of Deregulation, Family and Social Aid, Carlos Pollán, of Vox, who confirmed that the regional Government will follow the path opened in Extremadura and Aragón with the preparation of return and repatriation plans for unaccompanied minors and with the verification of their age.
In parallel, the Socialist Group has registered fifteen questions addressed to the regional Executive to detail how many real cases of adults tutored as minors have been detected in Castilla y León in the last five years, what the cost of the measure announced by Pollán will be, what scientific backing it has, what guarantees will be offered to the affected persons and with what powers it intends to implement it.
The spokesperson for Deregulation and Family of the Socialist Group, Carmen Iglesias, has called on the Board to stop using migrant minors as a tool for political confrontation and has appealed directly to the Government of Castilla y León to act with full respect for the Rule of Law.
Carmen Iglesias has expressed her "deep concern" about the risk that tests which the Law and jurisprudence consider "absolutely exceptional" will now become "a systematic, indiscriminate practice for political purposes".
The socialist prosecutor has stressed that the Supreme Court's doctrine "is "clear and fully consolidated" since 2014 and establishes that a minor with a valid passport or official documentation "cannot be subjected to medical tests to determine age unless there are concrete, reasoned, and duly motivated indications that said documentation is unreliable".
She added that the High Court requires any decision to be based on an individualized judgment of proportionality and has insisted that mere physical appearance is not enough on its own to question the age of a minor or to subject them to medical examinations.
"These guarantees are not optional, they constitute a legal obligation derived from the Supreme Court's jurisprudence and from the reinforced protection that the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes for the best interests of the minor," the socialist has defended.
Iglesias has reproached the Junta for not having specified what objective criteria will allow justifying the tests it intends to apply to unaccompanied migrant minors, what operational protocol will be followed, or what legal safeguards will accompany their execution. "This lack of specificity fuels the concern that the measure responds more to a political strategy linked to the debate on the distribution of minors than to a real need proven by objective data," she explained.