Police found an 8-year-old boy hidden in a suitcase at an airport on Thursday in an attempt to be smuggled across the border into Spanish territory in North Africa, Yahoo! News reports according to AFP.  

"When they put the suitcase through the scanner, the operator noticed something strange, which seemed to be a person inside the case," a spokesman for the Civil Guard police force said. "When it was opened they found a minor, in a terrible state."

A 19-year-old woman tried to smuggle the boy from Morocco into a small Spanish-governed territory of Ceuta. According to the spokesman, the boy is from Ivory Coast.

The woman was arrested and is set to go before a judge. Meanwhile, police also arrested the boy's father just a few hours later when he tried to cross the Spanish territory border.

According to reports, the father is also Ivorian but lives in the Canary Islands governed by Spain.

A 23-year-old person from Morocco was found trying to smuggle across the Spanish border in a shipping container earlier in the week. The person was found in a container left unattended over the May holiday weekend in the port of Melilla after four days of being held without food and water.

Thousands of people risk their lives trying to smuggle Spanish territories on the border of Morocco and Melilla in order to find a better life in Europe. Some try to run across the 23-foot fences at Spanish-Moroccan borders while others try to swim across the shores in Morocco.

The father of the 8-year-old boy is being held on charges of human rights abuse, CBS News reports. The 19-year-old who was caught with the boy in a suitcase is reportedly married to the father.