“Where else would you see that?” she asked.

Most of the migrants who arrive in Ceuta do not, however, want to stay here, but hope to get permission to travel to the Spanish mainland, where they hope to find jobs or cross the open borders to elsewhere in Europe. Often, that permission takes months to come.

As a result, many of those who have made it to Ceuta soon make another effort at escape, to mainland Spain.

Assad Nowdi, 16, a Moroccan who has been here three months, said he goes to the center for migrant minors for meals and occasionally a good night’s sleep, but usually he sleeps in the cracks among the giant blocks of stone piled up to make a jetty near the port.

At night, he said, he and his friends often try to swim for a ferryboat headed onward to Europe. “We will keep trying,” he said. “Eventually we’ll get there.”