Paris cracks down on migrants
French police evacuated more than 1,600 migrants from two camps in northern Paris on Thursday, one of the biggest such operations in the city in years, a day after the government unveiled tough new measures to a “take back control” of immigration.
About 600 police officers escorted the migrants from tents where coaches transported them to reception centres, in an operation that began under steady rain at about 6am.
Police said they evacuated a total of 1,606 migrants from two camps near the Porte de la Chapelle, sheltered under part of the ring road that surrounds the capital.
Many of the occupants, which included families with children, said they were from Afghanistan or Africa.
“I cannot allow a dangerous situation like this — all this cannot remain,” Paris police chief Didier Lallement said at the scene.
He said the operation, one of the largest in Paris since camps regularly began springing up in 2015, was in line with a government plan.
The government of President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to crack down on immigration, a move widely seen as an attempt to keep right-wing parties from siphoning off voters ahead of municipal elections in 2020.
“We want to take back control of our migration policy,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Wednesday, unveiling measures which he said aimed to strengthen France’s “sovereignty”.
Interior minister Christophe Castaner had warned on Wednesday that the several camps housing up to 3,000 migrants in northeastern Paris would be evacuated before the end of 2019.
Castaner also said that 16,000 places would be made available in three new migrant centres, in an effort to keep migrants from setting up new settlements.
Awa, a 32-year-old woman from the Ivory Coast, said on Thursday that she had been sleeping in a tent at the Porte de la Chapelle since she arrived in France a year ago.
“It’s raining, it’s cold. I don’t know where I will go, but I’m glad to go because I will have a roof over my head tonight,” she said, as she waited in line for a coach, carrying just a backpack.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said it was the 59th operation to clear migrant camps since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and misery in Asia, the Middle East and Africa headed for Europe.
“Each time we’re told they won’t come back,” Hidalgo, who has clashed with the government over who is responsible for finding a solution to the migrant camps, said.
Residents have long complained of insecurity and unsanitary conditions at the camps, and police officials said they had registered 213 “aggressions” near the Porte de la Chapelle camps in 2019 — not including clashes between migrant groups.
But the migrants evacuated on Thursday will not be forced to stay in the centres or file for asylum, which many fear could lead to their deportation.
Castaner told France Info radio on Thursday that police would also move to dismantle a notorious “crack hill” of drug addicts near the Porte de la Chapelle camps by Christmas.
The area had already been evacuated in June 2018, but aid groups say about 100 people are still living there, often attracting migrants from the nearby camps.
Macron has for months been talking up a tougher approach to immigration, arguing that France must end its “lax” approach to prevent voters from drifting to the far right.
Analysts say that beyond municipal contests in May 2020, he is gearing up for a likely repeat of his 2017 presidential battle against Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Assembly, set for 2022.
Macron’s government said it would curtail access to health care for asylum seekers, adding that there were too many abuses of the system.