Epilogue with tear gas for the former Ehpad des Tourelles, on the outskirts of Toulouse; From 7 a.m. this Friday morning, CRS columns entered the building to expel, in application of a court decisione, the hundred young foreigners who lived there. According to the associations that follow them, these young people are mainly from West Africa but they also come from Asia or North Africa.
Among them Sami, an Algerian. “I arrived in France a year ago, I’m not yet 18,” he told AFP, squatting next to a large plastic bag containing all his belongings. I never thought I would be treated like a criminal. “We don’t deserve this. Certainly, we are Africans but we are not animals”, repeated in loop Mohamad, a Guinean under the blow of the emotion.
“Tonight, they don’t know where they sleep, dozens of young people find themselves homeless without any alternative accommodation,” laments Jennifer Gruman, from the AutonoMIE collective and the Tous-tes En Classe 31 (TEC 31) association.
Change of ownership
Most of the young people concerned were declared adults by the departmental council of Haute-Garonne but filed an appeal with the courts to have their minority recognized and to obtain the status of unaccompanied minors. The prefecture of Haute-Garonne indicates that a personalized assessment of their administrative situation was offered to all young people before their expulsion, in order to find a rehousing solution, but “only four accepted it”.
The city and the metropolis of Toulouse had set up in 2019 at Les Tourelles “a temporary accommodation system” for several dozen of these young people, with the support of several associations. Subsequently, the municipal center for social action (CCAS), which became the owner of the building of the former Ehpad, decided to close it on January 25, 2022 and ordered the occupants to leave the premises.
The administrative court of Toulouse had given him reason at the beginning of May 2022.