More migrants leaving makeshift camp in France, as authorities begin demolition
CALAIS, France — Young men with scarves wrapped around their faces to ward off the morning cold and with bags and suitcases in tow continued to trickle out of the migrant camp near the French port of Calais on Tuesday, the second day of a long-awaited operation to clear it out.
Early in the morning, dozens of young people, classified by officials as unaccompanied minors, crowded in front of a temporary processing center set up by the French government to take refugees from Afghanistan, Sudan and other war-torn countries to temporary centers around France. The crowd pushed and jostled briefly with the police, but overall the evacuation remained calm, and the pace appeared to slow.
On Tuesday afternoon, the head of the Pas-de-Calais Prefecture, Fabienne Buccio, told reporters that the “cleaning up” of the camp would start soon, but acknowledged that some migrants might resist the move.
Cleaning crews arrive
Soon after Buccio spoke, cleaning crews wearing fluorescent orange vests and white hard hats arrived on the edge of the camp, along with small bulldozers. The crews promptly set about clearing out a small section of the camp, working their way inward, and throwing dirty blankets and mattresses, discarded furniture and tarps into a large container for trash.
In the camp itself, some areas were still busy with life, including groups of teenagers playing soccer. But in other sections, the occupants were gone, leaving behind burned structures and trash-strewn floors.
At midday, there was almost no line for single adults to enter the processing center. The prefecture said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that 656 migrants had left by bus, bringing the total number of people bused from the camp to 2,574 this week.
The operation, which started on Monday, is an attempt to get rid of the squalid, makeshift camp that is a maze of wooden shacks and tents crisscrossed by muddy, trashstrewn lanes where 6,000 to 8,000 people had been living, according to recent estimates.
Known as the Jungle, the camp has been a thorn in the side of the French government for years and a symbol of Europe’s struggle to handle the influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Resistance feared
The French government hopes to raze the camp, but aid groups worry that some migrants might put up resistance, especially once the authorities start physically destroying the makeshift shelters that some migrants, despite squalid conditions, had come to see as their homes.
Many still want to reach Britain, but their exact numbers are unclear, and some may have already moved to smaller makeshift camps in the region, according to aid groups.
The French government has deployed more than 1,200 police officers to oversee the clearing out of the camp.
Still, aid groups worry that dismantling the Jungle will do little to stem the flow of migrants.
“What’s going to happen for the thousands of minors who are going to continue to arrive?” Hanryon said. “As long as you have the same migratory flows, and the same migration policies on both sides of the Channel, it will change nothing.”