In 2014, there were 49,537 people detained in what are called ‘administrative retention’ centres and units on mainland France and its overseas territories, an increase of 9% on 2013, according to a 122-page annual report produced by NGOs the Cimade, the French branch of the Order of Malta, France terre d’asile, Assfam and Forum Réfugiés, all of which provide humanitarian and rights assistance to refugees and asylum-seekers.
That number compared with 4,309 migrants detained in Germany, 2,571 in the UK, 9,020 in Spain and 6,285 in Belgium, found the study, which is a compilation of data and observations on the situation in French immigration detention centres in 2014.
The five NGOs, whose active presence in the holding centres is authorized by the French government, reported that the detentions “prove in fact to be often of no useful purpose, sometimes even absurd, and marked by numerous rights violations”.
More than half - 55% - of people held in the centres were last year forcibly expelled to another European country, “from which they can easily return”. According to the NGOs, “a large number of them would have voluntarily left [France] if they had been given a time delay for departure”.
“These expulsions thus allow the administration to bolster its results, given that 80% of expulsion orders towards a [European Union] member state are carried out, compared with 34.2% towards a country outside of Europe,” the authors observed.
European nationals represented 28% of those given deportation orders in 2014, principally Albanians and Romanians (despite the right of the latter to free movement in the EU). While Albanians are top of the table of nationalities expelled from France, they represent the fourth-largest national group detained. They are described by the report as the “new population” with which the French authorities are able to attain high expulsion figures. The fact that Albania has obtained official recognition of its candidature to join the EU “poses at the very least a problem of coherence” noted the report (presented in full below).
The NGOs described an “abusive” use of the detention system in order to break up migrant squats in Paris and makeshift camps in Calais, the Channel port where migrants hoping to cross clandestinely to the UK have gathered in large numbers. These concerned “people in a situation of great precariousness and who are from countries in a state of generalized violence (Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan)”.
In Calais, of the 600 mostly Eritrean migrants evacuated last year from camps by police, 205 were placed in detention centres of which 24 were ultimately expelled to Italy – which with Greece has become the primary entry point in Europe of African and Middle Eastern migrants.
The situation in detention centres outside of mainland France comes in for particular criticism. These, insists the report, “concentrate the most serious violations of rights”. It cites the case of the Indian Ocean département (the French equivalent of a county) Mayotte, where 19,810 migrants were held in detention centres in 2014 “without the possibility of defending their rights”, with mass expulsion orders – principally back to the Comoro Islands - carried out so swiftly that those targeted have no possibility of appealing their case before a magistrate. Under French law, a migrant held in a detention centre is entitled to appeal their detention status before a designated ‘freedom and detention judge’ (juge des libertés et de la détention) after having been retained for at least five days.
In the French département of Guyana, on the northern coast of South America, large numbers of people, principally from neighbouring countries Suriname or Brazil, are repeatedly expelled after re-entering the territory, the study said, citing cases of individuals who had been detained “up to 25 times” in centres. “The repetition of this phenomenon, year after year, demonstrates the impasse of this policy,” it stated.
Plight of unlawfully detained children continues
Referring to the recourse of migrants to appeal their detention before a magistrate, the NGOs denounced the authorities’ “manifest will to bypass the judge”. In mainland France, 45.2% of expulsions are carried out before the five-day legal delay before an appeal can be lodged. Meanwhile, the judges freed from detention 20.3% of those migrants who appealed their case. “The associations [who compiled the report] observe that families - above all those arrested at their homes – often arrive at the detention centre at the end of the day, which makes meetings with association representatives difficult,” the study noted. “Flights are generally reserved the following morning, such that the families are sent away without even having had the possibility of claiming their rights. On the other hand, we observe that of the 12 families placed [in detention in 2014] for more than a day in mainland France, just one was eventually sent away [from France], the others having been freed by the courts or by the prefecture [local administrative authorities] itself.”
The NGOs underlined that the number of children held in detention centres had “considerably risen” to reach 5,692 in 2014, up from 3,608 the previous year. On mainland France their numbers rose year-on-year by 16%, and in the case of Mayotte the rise was 59%. Among children detained last year, 676 were held in the smaller ‘detention units’, contrary to law.
During his presidential campaign in early 2012, and following a ruling against France by the European Court of Human Rights over the detention of children held with their parents both in police custody and subsequently a detention centre, François Hollande pledged to end the detention of migrant children. After he was elected in May that year, the French interior ministry on July 6th 2012 issued a circular which stated that families targeted by deportation procedures and who have underage children should remain in the place of residence under judicial control “rather than placed in detention”. Yet despite that order, the children of illegal immigrants continue to be detained in numbers that last year reached what the NGOs described as “a sad record”.
The NGOs called for an amendment to the bill of law regarding the rights of foreign nationals in France which is currently before French parliament, now set to be debated in the upper house, the Senate, after its adoption by the lower house, the National Assembly, last week. “This bill in no way envisages overturning the most contested provisions in the reforms of 2011, which were nevertheless denounced at the time by the current ruling [socialist parliamentary] majority,” the report stated.
The current bill allows for the maintenance of a maximum 45-day period of detention of migrants (which until 2011 was 32 days), and that of migrants’ right to appeal their detention, before a judge, only after they have been held for a minimum period of five days (which was lengthened from 48 hours in 2011). The report also deplored that “no satisfactory protection” was given to the most vulnerable migrants placed in detention, and “notably the sick”.
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The French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse