Abstract

In 2023, Spain recorded the arrival of 56,852 irregular migrants, with over 90 percent utilizing the services of criminal smuggling organizations. This article analyzes the judicial use of the information gathered from the debriefed migrants who were smuggled in by sea. The victims, who decide to collaborate with the competent authorities, are considered protected witnesses, and their testimonies, due to the risk of not being reachable at the trial hearing, are introduced in the judicial proceedings as pre-constituted evidence. Given the exceptional nature of this type of evidence, the European Court of Human Rights, the Spanish Constitutional Court, and the Spanish Supreme Court require that the evidence be complemented with objective elements. In this regard, this article reveals that the photographs taken by the EU’s decentralized agency, the European Border and Coast Guard, are external corroborations that reinforce the statements made by the migrants identifying the boatmasters as members of a migrant smuggling network.