Police in Spain claim 'massive fraud' by 400,000 migrants in amnesty process

Spanish police officers have come out strongly against the government's controversial migrant amnesty scheme, suggesting fraudulent applications risk undermining public trust in the process and border controls more generally.

Spain's National Police union JUPOL has claimed that although it anticipated a "very high" number of applications, in reality the figure is far more, and there could be evidence of "massive fraud".

The situation is so bad, police sources claim, as to be deemed "apocalyptic".

This comes as Spain's Supreme Court is considering referring the country's controversial mass migrant regularisation to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) amid concerns that it could conflict with EU law.

READ ALSO: Judges in Spain consider taking mass migrant amnesty to EU court

A JUPOL spokesperson said this week: "We have learned of a report in which the General Directorate of Immigration and Borders warns that some 400,000 of the applications submitted belong to people who were not in Spain during the required period."

This would constitute "massive fraud", they say, because many of those people do not meet the requirements, which include five continuous months of residence in Spain before January 1st 2026, among others.

Police sources claim there is clear evidence of illegality and fraudulent applications to bypass the criteria.

The General Directorate of Immigration and Borders also issued an internal alert via an official letter, reported in the Spanish press, regarding an 866 percent increase in reports of alleged lost passports by Pakistani nationals, thought to be a tactic to circumvent criminal records checks - another of the requirements.

In the case of Algerians, the rise is 356.25 percent, followed by Moroccans, which increased by 114 percent.

"This confirms what we’ve been warning about from the start: that it would create a pull factor and that the mafias would take advantage because the requirements are actually very lax," the JUPOL spokesperson added.

However, research has previously shown that there is no evidence of previous mass regularisations creating a pull factor.

READ ALSO: Will Spain's amnesty cause a spike in irregular migration?

Even before Spain's mass amnesty was announced by Pedro Sánchez's government, Spanish police have regularly arrested criminal gangs that specialise in providing undocumented migrants with counterfeit documents at a cost, such as fake padrón town hall registration papers that can be used to fraudulently prove five months of residency.

The application window for the migrant amnesty officially came to an end on Tuesday June 30th 2026 after two and a half months of processing.

The total number of application will almost certainly double the initial government projections of 500,000, with ministries involved in the process now estimating between 1.2 million and 1.3 million applications in total, although there are believed to be duplicates that will reduce the final number.

If JUPOL's claims of 400,000 fraudulent applications turns out to be true, this would mean that roughly one in three migrants applying for the amnesty was not living in Spain in 2025 as required.

Senior police officers have spoken out against "the complete lack of transparency" in applications.

Lacking a clearly defined division of responsibilities has not helped. The decision to use Correos and the company Tragsa, the state-owned company within SEPI dedicated to providing services, further complicated relations.

Police sources say it's unclear whether applications will now be referred back to the Immigration Department to check whether applications meet the requirements, or whether they will simply be deemed valid.

"The lack of transparency is evident in the withholding of figures and information regarding the administrative process and procedures for granting regularisation or verifying the documentation provided by the applicants," insist police sources who spoke to El Mundo.

Spanish police were among the first to suggest that application numbers would be far beyond the initial government and think tank estimates.

Union spokespersons have also spoken out about potential "social mistrust" created by unlawful applications during the regularisation, as well as public anxieties "regarding border management" and public safety.

Crucially, the prospect of fraudulent applications via Spain's government amnesty - of which there appears to be clear evidence - clearly risks undermining the wider regularisation process for the many hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants who have long lived, worked and socially integrated in Spain and hope to gain residency via a legal route.

READ ALSO: Spain's undocumented migrant amnesty ends with 1.3 million applications