Two French holding centers for illegal immigrants have been set ablaze in recent weeks, ratcheting up tensions over tough new immigration policies that France wants to spread Europe-wide.
The immigration minister isn’t backing down — and is instead accusing immigrants’ some aid groups of inciting detainees to commit arson.
Conditions vary at the 22 detention centers around France. Aid groups say hygiene is improving, but barbed wire and increasing numbers of security cameras and automatically locking doors fuel immigrants’ fears. Some centers hold children, even infants.
France under conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy has sought to change the profile of immigrants who come to France, favoring skilled labor, students and professionals. That — and an aggressive policy of expulsion quotas — diminishes the chances of immigrants fleeing poverty to get residence papers.
Immigrants’ rights defenders say the government is going too far, and say the Immigration Ministry’s target of 26,000 expulsions this year increases the pressure to catch illegal immigrants while eating away at their human rights.
Each day at the Mesnil-Amelot center, a new list is posted behind glass in the cafeteria of the center, with names and dates for those who will see a judge, visit with a consular official or be put on a plane for immediate expulsion, several people being held there said.
Two small mattress fires broke out last Saturday at the facility, and tear gas was used to contain people during the emergency. Quickly extinguished, the blazes heightened concerns that the situation in France’s holding centers was deteriorating.
A major fire on June 22 devastated the largest center, in Vincennes, east of Paris, after the death of a Tunisian detainee, said to have died of natural causes.
The two Centers of Administrative Detention are among 22 in mainland France plus 10 smaller locales and a handful in overseas French territories. The centers have more than doubled their intake capacity in five years, from 786 places in 2003 to 1,700 today.
A report on the centers by Cimade, a respected NGO, says the “industrialization” of expulsions has taken hold in France.
With the crackdown, “there is a big turnover [and] it is more difficult for us to provide individual and personal help,” Cimade’s Julie Chansel said.
Last year, 35,000 people were placed in detention, including 242 children, one a three-week-old child, according to Cimade.
Tensions are increasing as France looks to launch a common immigration pact this fall with its 26 European partners and as tough policies like the expulsion quotas instituted by Brice Hortefeux, France’s first minister of immigration, change the landscape for illegal immigrants.
Less than two years ago, foreigners pressing for residency papers to give them legal status routinely held noisy street demonstrations. Today, they lie low as police and airport officials multiply identity checks.
Hortefeux convened police and gendarmerie officials on Monday then announced that he was filing a complaint against a small immigrant rights group for allegedly provoking destruction. He denounced SOS-Soutien aux Sans-papiers as an “extreme leftist mini-group.”
The minister’s statement cited the group’s president, Rodolphe Nettier, as telling a major daily Le Parisien this week that “Our marching order is: burn the centers.”
Nettier says he was misquoted. However, he maintained in an interview that setting a fire inside the center “is legitimate defense since they [migrants] are locked up and innocent.”
A joint statement on Wednesday by six associations that work with illegal immigrants said that officials “exonerate themselves of their responsibility” by seeking to blame aid groups rather than analyzing the effects wrought by their policies.
“Acts of despair and anger are multiplying” in the centers, the statement warned.
Ahmed, a 22-year-old Tunisian, and another man went before a court on Monday as the prime suspects in setting the mattress fires. They were acquitted but the Justice Ministry asked the prosecutor to lodge an appeal, and he remains an illegal alien.
Out of the center, he hides out at a friend’s house, looking for a day’s work at a building site.
“I’m in France since 2001 and if I return what will I do in Tunisia?” he said by telephone, refusing to be identified by his full name because of his fear of being returned to the center. “Even if they put me in handcuffs, I won’t go back.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese