Nick Shirley’s New Video Dismantles The Left’s Narrative On Ceuta’s Migrant Crisis

Authored by Aaron Hanscom via PJ Media,

Intrepid investigative journalist Nick Shirley isn’t one to shrink from danger. He had to escape from Cuba when spies followed him during his trip to the communist island and was forced to hire 24/7 security after exposing Somali fraud in Minneapolis. In his latest video, Shirley once again finds himself in serious peril when a Muslim man chases him through the streets while wielding a knife and threatening to stab him.

The scene of the pursuit was the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta, which has made headlines in recent days after 60,000 illegal migrants poured in from Morocco. Shirley traveled to the autonomous city to report on the current state of the crisis, which has become more manageable after most of the migrants returned to Morocco.

While the knife chase – in which the enraged man yells, “I’m going to stab both of you,” at Shirley and Javier Mansilla, the Spanish vigilante who accompanies Shirley in the video, as they run down the street – will likely attract the most attention, there are several other revealing moments I want to highlight that go against the left’s preferred narrative of what is occurring in Spain right now.

Spaniards feel unsafe

A woman from Ceuta tells Shirley that she “felt threatened” in the immediate days after the border breach. “I couldn’t go outside with my baby. We couldn’t go outside. I live up high, but my neighbor lives on the ground floor. And they were scared they were going to break into the house,” she says.

Mansilla then expresses the anger that so many Spaniards, like the more than 1,000 who protested in Madrid on Sunday, feel about the country’s migrant crisis, which has resulted in horrific crimes against women:

I feel very, very angry. I cannot understand how we let our own women live with fear going, running to their homes with the baby. Like “I don’t want to stay in the street. I go home. Thank you. Thank you.” I’m not going to allow this. Any Spanish guy shouldn’t allow this. If we are men, if we are real men, we should do something right now.

Mansilla continues with a warning to all of Europe: “If we don’t wake up now, we will fall. For sure. For sure. This is our moment. Wake up, Europe. Wake up.”

There is a political party that is talking about the link between insecure borders and crime: the conservative Vox party, led by Santiago Abascal, who traveled to Ceuta on Sunday. He called what happened an “invasion” and said, “The frontiers of Ceuta and Melilla are the walls of our home and homeland, and they are not being protected by a corrupt and traitorous government.”

The media portrays Vox and other European parties opposed to illegal immigration as radical or far-right in order to render their ideas unfit for serious debate. In a similar fashion, the media – like Anne Applebaum in her Atlantic piece, “The Far Right Is Distorting Ceuta” – has tried to dismiss the right’s concerns over the crisis in Ceuta while criticizing it for labeling the situation an “invasion.” That’s why the work of independent journalists like Shirley is so important: it helps uncover the true story.

The illegal migrants sure do love Pedro Sanchez

While lefties like Spanish actor Javier Bardem are busy spreading conspiracy theories about Israel being responsible for Spain’s border crisis, the migrants whom Shirley interviews are pretty clear about who motivated them to risk death – at least 72 people died while crossing – to come to Spain: Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Indeed, the most frequently repeated words in the video are “Viva Pedro Sanchez!” or “Long live Pedro Sanchez!” “I love Pedro Sanchez” is also a popular refrain. As I wrote in Elon Musk Was Right: Pedro Sanchez Is a Traitor, “Their gratitude to the Socialist prime minister is due to his mass amnesty plan, which received 1.2 million applications by its June 30, 2026, deadline.”

But don’t take my word for it. A 17-year-old Moroccan migrant, when asked by Shirley how he expects to leave Ceuta and get to mainland Spain, says matter-of-factly, “Through asylum.”

The idea that muslims view Spain as occupied isn’t a myth

After another migrant in Shirley’s video declares, “This is Morocco,” Mansilla explains that Ceuta in fact became part of Spain hundreds of years before Morocco gained its independence in 1956.

Not everyone cares about that fact. As I wrote in a 2007 article for the Strategic Studies Group on the “intifada of Spain’s Ceuta”:

The autonomous regions of Ceuta and Melilla are seen by Islamists as the opening fronts in their anticipated reconquest of Spain. Last year a North African group calling itself Nadim al-Magrebi warned of a holy war against the infidel Spanish state which has occupied the two cities. Al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman Zawahiri, has called for Islamic land to be reconquered from Al-Andalus to Iraq and compared the Spanish occupation of Ceuta and Melilla to the Russian occupation of Chechnya and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The irony that Spain, perhaps the most antisemitic country in Europe – or at least the one with the most antisemitic leader – should be so hostile to Israel, which, like Spain, faces claims that its territory is occupied, is obvious. That’s why I agree with my colleague Scott Pinsker that mockery of Spain’s (and the left’s) hypocrisy on this issue is warranted.

The left craves chaos

Shirley asks Mansilla why he thinks Spain’s politicians are allowing the border crisis to happen.

If they allow this to become the Third World, they know – people in power – they know they will be able to do whatever they want. They will increase their power because a ruler in the Third World is a real ruler. The thing here is that people in power know that if they become this, the Third World, they will increase their power and their money even more. That’s the thing because they can control the society in an easier way. I mean, if, if you keep this full of third-worlders, you can do whatever you want if you are in power.

Vox leader Abascal calls Sanchez, who is mired in corruption scandals, a mafia leader and a traitor. Americans should remember how recently their own country had wide-open borders and a president mired in corruption scandals. Victor Davis Hanson explained on Fox News’ Hannity why the Biden administration also craved open-borders chaos:

First of all, they are nihilist; they like the chaos. Second, they feel all these people will come, and they cannot assimilate or culturally integrate. They have no skills or background checks. No health care. And that means they will have enormous demands on the state, with bigger government, more taxes, more redistribution. And of course they are a constituency. They will be dependent on the state, and they are going to vote for a socialist ticket. And that is the subtext of both what is going on in Spain and what is going on over the border. And what the socialists have done here.

President Donald Trump has connected the situation in Ceuta to warnings about what the United States could return to if Democrats regain control of the White House and Congress. We should heed that warning as we watch Nick Shirley’s video.

Aaron Hanscom is an editor at PJ Media, where he has worked since 2007. He was also an editor at RealClearPolitics.