Italy temporarily restored border controls on travelers arriving from Spain Friday as the mass migrant crossing into Ceuta, Spain, escalated from a Spanish emergency into a wider test of Europe’s passport-free travel system.

The move followed the entry of approximately 60,000 migrants from Morocco into Ceuta, Spain — a Spanish autonomous city on the North African coast. Spain’s Interior Ministry said 48,300 people had since voluntarily returned to Morocco, leaving fewer than 2,000 people in the territory, while the reported death toll among migrants attempting to reach the enclave rose to 57 people.

The crisis is reverberating far beyond Spain because it challenges one of the European Union’s central promises: that member states can maintain open internal borders while jointly protecting the bloc’s external frontier.

Schengen rests on a tradeoff: participating countries remove most controls between one another while jointly securing the zone’s external borders. Italy’s decision to restore checks, alongside calls for tougher restrictions from conservative leaders across Europe, has raised questions about whether migration pressures could lead governments to retreat from free movement and reclaim more national control.

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President Donald Trump also seized on the images from Spain, warning during a Cabinet meeting at Camp David, Maryland, Friday that a similar crisis could unfold in the United States if Republicans lose power.

«I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place,» Trump said.

«That same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected — except worse,» he said, blaming «weak law, bad management» and liberal migration policies.

The breach also ignited a broader conservative backlash across Europe and the United States.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a post on X that Italy would impose targeted checks on non-European Union nationals arriving from Spain by air or sea for one month, while coordinating with France to strengthen controls along the Franco-Italian border.

«This is an extraordinary measure, adopted to safeguard national security and prevent possible repercussions for our nation,» Meloni wrote.

She said the controls would remain in place only as long as necessary and would be designed to limit disruption to summer tourism.

France was increasing checks along its border with Spain, Reuters reported Friday, while right-wing parties across Europe blamed Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s migration policies for weakening Spain’s ability to secure an external European Union border.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage warned on X that the crisis would eventually affect Britain, while French politician Marine Le Pen called for tighter French border controls.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon criticized Spain for lecturing Israel on security while struggling to control its own border.

White House officials Steven Cheung and Anna Kelly also connected the images from Ceuta, Spain, to the Biden administration’s border policies and Trump’s longstanding warnings about mass migration.

Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, told Fox News Digital that Ceuta, Spain, could become «a key turning point in the unraveling of the European Union.»

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Migrants run and cheer as they cross on foot into the North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco, after swimming over from the Moroccan side and overwhelming police at the city’s breakwater, according to Spain’s Guardia Civil, in Ceuta, Spain, July 30, 2026. (FARO TV via Reuters)

«I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the European Union,» he said while acknowledging that his view remains outside the European mainstream. «Once you unravel Schengen — which I think is inevitable — this breaks down the entire European project.»

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, broadened the criticism of Sánchez.

«We told you Sánchez was a disaster,» Dubowitz wrote on X. «You dismissed the warnings because he vilified Israel, defended Hamas, attacked America, and cozied up to Chávez, Khamenei, and other anti-American dictators. Now that his migration policies are threatening Europe at home, you’ve suddenly woken up.»

Ceuta is legally part of Spain despite being located on the North African coast, across the Strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain. The approximately seven-square-mile territory shares a land border with Morocco and is one of two Spanish autonomous cities in Africa, along with Melilla.

Ceuta, Spain, is not a protectorate or colony. Its residents are Spanish citizens, and Madrid considers it an integral part of Spain, although Morocco disputes Spanish sovereignty over both territories.

The surge followed controversy over a Spanish Supreme Court ruling limiting authorities’ ability to summarily return migrants intercepted at sea, as well as a separate Sánchez government program granting legal status to undocumented migrants already living in Spain.

The court ruled earlier in July that migrants intercepted while swimming or traveling by sea toward Ceuta or Melilla, Spain, could not be immediately returned under a special procedure written for people attempting to cross the territories’ fortified land borders. They must instead be processed through Spain’s ordinary immigration, asylum and removal system. The ruling did not grant them an automatic right to remain.

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A map shows Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city on the North African coast bordering Morocco. (Fox News)

Sánchez blamed trafficking networks for spreading a false impression that migrants who reached Ceuta, Spain, by sea would be allowed to stay.

Critics also pointed to Spain’s mass regularization program. The government initially estimated that approximately 500,000 undocumented migrants would qualify for renewable residence and work permits if they had lived in Spain for at least five months before the end of 2025 and had no criminal record. Applications ultimately reached approximately 1 million, far exceeding the original estimate.

«When you offer amnesty to over a million illegal migrants in Spain, this acts as a huge incentive for millions more to try to enter Spain illegally,» Gardiner said. «What we’ve seen in Ceuta over the last 24 hours is just the tip of the iceberg.»

Gardiner said the footage appeared to show that roughly 99% of those crossing were «fighting-age males» and warned of a potentially «significant terror risk.»

«This is what happens when you introduce amnesty policies,» he added. «You literally open the floodgates on a biblical scale.»

The Spanish government argues that the program applies only to migrants who were already in the country before the cutoff and is designed to bring workers into the formal economy rather than encourage new arrivals.

Andrew Fox, senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital the crisis may have been deliberately triggered in response to regional geopolitics.

«This is a crisis likely engineered by Morocco in response to Spain’s recent engagement with Algeria,» Fox said. «On a normal day, Spanish security can man gates and crossings, but they cannot control the Algerian side of the border. The fact that these people cannot simply be returned to Morocco en masse, however, shows that the international asylum and refugee system is fundamentally broken and open to widespread abuse. Without fixing that, there can be no border security in Europe.»

Gardiner warned that the political fallout could threaten Schengen and the wider European project.

Although the pressure on Ceuta, Spain, appeared to ease as thousands returned to Morocco, the breach had already spread beyond Spain — fueling a European fight over borders and entering the American political debate through Trump’s warning about a possible Democratic return to power.

Morocco denied facilitating the mass crossing. Morocco’s ambassador to Spain, Karima Benyaich, told the Associated Press that the events in Ceuta had unfolded against Rabat’s wishes.

Spanish and Moroccan maritime patrols, supported by Spain’s Maritime Rescue service, conduct rescue operations off the southern coast of Ceuta after a sharp increase in migrant arrivals to the Spanish enclave in North Africa.  (Antonio Sempere / JNA Press/Sipa USA)

«We have always prioritized legal, orderly and safe migration for all,» Benyaich said. She did not address what triggered the sudden surge. Moroccan security forces later used water cannons and warning shots to prevent additional crossings, according to The Associated Press. 

America’s biggest obstacle in the technology race with China may not be Beijing, but growing resistance to new data centers and the power needed to run them, according to Palantir’s chief technology officer.

«The proximate issues are definitely going to be power and backlash against data centers,» Shyam Sankar said in an interview with Fox News Digital at Palantir’s American Builder Summit.

Sankar, whose company builds software for the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and major manufacturers, argued the U.S. risks slowing its own technological progress more than falling behind Beijing.

«The only threat to AI generating prosperity for America is suicide, not homicide.»

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The U.S. and China are pouring billions into the race to dominate artificial intelligence, viewing the technology as central to economic growth, military power and geopolitical influence. Winning that race depends on an enormous buildout of data centers, power generation and transmission infrastructure to support increasingly capable systems. 

But those projects have drawn growing resistance from communities worried about electricity demand, water use and whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.

Companies have raced to build new data centers to support a wave of new computing infrastructure, fueling a nationwide expansion that also has sparked growing local opposition. The issue has spilled into the 2026 midterm campaigns, with candidates in battleground states such as Pennsylvania running ads focused on the economic and environmental effects of the projects.

Residents have raised concerns about electricity demand, water consumption, noise, traffic and whether utility customers will ultimately bear the cost of expanding the power grid. Some projects have been delayed or canceled, while lawmakers in several states have proposed restrictions or moratoriums on new facilities.

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Some developers have responded by pairing new data centers with dedicated power generation rather than relying entirely on the electric grid.

Sankar argues those debates risk slowing the industrial gains the technology can already deliver. He pointed to one submarine-parts manufacturer that cut production planning from two weeks to less than an hour, freeing enough capacity to add a third shift.

«There is no one on that shift who thinks, ‘Hey, I got my job because of AI,’ but that’s actually what happened,» he said.

Protestors hold up «Stop data centers» signs, on the day of President Donald Trump’s speech at the General Motors Proving Ground, in Milford, Michigan, July 27, 2026. (Carlos Osorio/Reuters)

The summit itself appeared designed to counter one of the AI industry’s biggest public relations challenges: fears that technology will replace jobs. Rather than showcasing increasingly capable AI models, Palantir filled the stage with factory workers, healthcare workers and military personnel demonstrating software they had built to solve problems in their own workplaces.

Sankar argued the AI industry has become overly focused on pursuing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, rather than deploying today’s AI systems across the economy.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to a still-theoretical system capable of performing a broad range of intellectual tasks at or beyond human level, rather than excelling mainly at narrower tasks such as writing, coding or image analysis.

He compared the current moment to the early days of electricity, arguing that while technology already exists, businesses have yet to reorganize themselves around it.

«The AI we have is powerful enough that it should have created more prosperity and value,» he said. «The only reason it hasn’t yet is not a failing of the technology, it’s a lack of our national will to push and invest in diffusing the technology through our economy.»

«We shouldn’t lose the plot in pining away for a machine god,» he added.

The summit brought together a cohort of Palantir’s American Tech Fellowship, where workers from industries including manufacturing, healthcare and defense demonstrated AI applications they had built for use in their jobs.

The demonstrations were intended to illustrate Sankar’s contention: that AI will make workers more productive than ever rather than replace them.

That runs against much of the public sentiment, where workers across industries have begun to wonder how long until their jobs will be done by a machine.

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«How many people have actually, at the front line, have experienced AI and how it’s changed their job versus how many people are imbibing the fear-mongering from the social media feed, which is partially a Chinese psyop as well.»

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