Four hundred migrants were expelled on Tuesday in Calais, in Pas-de-Calais, during a new dismantling of their camp by the police, announced the prefecture. Following an expulsion order from the Virval area, near the hospital, “363 isolated people and 37 people belonging to families were distributed in 17 buses”, routed “to centers located in the Pas -de-Calais and the Hauts-de-France region, ”the prefecture said in a press release.
According to her, these “illegal” occupations – “about 450 tents” – caused “serious problems of safety, health and tranquility, in particular for the staff and users of the hospital center”.
According to the association L’Auberge des migrants, some 700 people were present in the area before the dismantling. “All personal belongings were seized – sleeping bags, tents – so tonight, those who remained there will be forced to sleep with nothing on their heads,” responded Pierre Roques, manager of the Migrants Hostel. He deplores a policy of “temporary removal” which “does not work despite the enormous resources deployed”: after the dismantling, “the exiles return very quickly, within 72 hours”.
“Prevent the reconstitution” of the jungle
“Thank you to the prefect62 and to the security forces who proceeded this morning, on my instructions, to the dismantling of a large migrant encampment in Calais,” tweeted the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin. The operation came shortly after a Sudanese miner was found dead in the neighboring town of Marck, after falling from a heavy truck he was trying to climb into in the hope of reaching England.
Almost five years after the dismantling of the “jungle” of Calais, hundreds of migrants – 1,500 to 2,000 according to associations, now 500 according to the prefecture – are currently present in Calais, including many families.
For the prefect Louis Le Franc, the “first concern” is “to prevent the reconstitution” of the jungle. Since January 1, he said, 15,553 migrants have managed to reach the English coast aboard small boats, while 13,807 people have been identified as intercepted or saved at sea and brought back to French soil.