Macron steps up calls for crackdown on migrants

Expanded detention part of ‘balanced’ approach, French president says amid criticism

PARIS— It’s getting colder, the clock is ticking and regional authorities are scrambling to meet French President Emmanuel Macron’s deadline: get migrants off France’s streets and out of forest hideouts by year’s end.

That won’t likely happen, and Macron’s government is now tightening the screws: ramping up expulsions, raising pressure on economic migrants and allowing divisive ID checks in emergency shelters.

Critics contend Macron’s increasingly tough policy on migrants — though wrapped in a cloak of goodwill — contradicts his image as a humanist who defeated an anti-immigrant populist for the presidency, and crossed a line passed by no other president in the land that prides itself as the cradle of human rights.

From snowy Alpine passes to the borders with Spain or Germany, migrants keep making their way to France. In Paris alone, police have evacuated around 30,000 people camping on sidewalks in the past two years.

No one doubts that France’s system of dealing with migrants needs fixing, with a perennial housing shortage and long wait times in applying for asylum.

“Living in the street. Living in a tent. Sometimes you get food. Sometimes you not get food,” said Samsoor Rasooli, a 25-year-old Afghan standing in line since 6 a.m. local time to apply for asylum at a Paris facility, where some spend the night on the sidewalk, strewn with filth, to keep their place. The door closed at midday, the 100 places allotted that day for applicants filled.

“It’s winter. I can’t sleep in the street,” Rasooli said.

Asylum opens the way for temporary housing, but only one-third of the 95,000 applicants this year were accepted, government officials say.

The huge makeshift camp in the English Channel port city of Calais, dismantled last year, was emblematic of the problems. Its residents were dispersed around France, but others keep coming in hopes of reaching Britain, and are finding a rude welcome. France’s highest administrative body said the migrants have been subjected to inhuman and degrading conditions, and an investigation ordered by the interior minister found that it was “plausible” police used excessive force against migrants, as Human Rights Watch says.

A bill overhauling asylum and immigration policy will be debated in the spring, notably expediting asylum demands but also doubling to 90 days the time a person without papers can be held in a holding centre, the last step before expulsion — an approach the government says is “balanced” and “efficient.”

Macron said in a speech in July in Orleans before a group of new citizens that he wanted people “off the streets, out of the woods” by the end of 2017. “I want emergency lodgings everywhere.” While his words conveyed humanity, the message bites.

Macron has made clear he wouldn’t accept economic migrants in France, wants those who don’t qualify for asylum expelled and doesn’t want them even trying to come to France.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told regional authorities in December to set up “mobile teams” to run checks in emergency housing to ascertain the status of migrants. Emergency shelters are considered bedrocks of the French tradition of open arms to those in need and have long been considered untouchable.

Patrick Weil, among France’s leading immigration specialists, said Macron “tweets about human rights and refugees during the day and at night gives the opposite orders.”

Weil contended on BFM-TV that Macron’s approach is “the most extreme we’ve had since the war.”