Gérald Darmanin announces “double” the capacity of detention centers to 3,000 places

The Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced in The Parisian that he was going “double the places in detention centers » to bring them to “3000» by 2027, with new centers in a dozen cities. The new administrative detention centers (CRA), intended by 2027 for undocumented immigrants awaiting their expulsion, will be located in eleven cities, the Ministry of the Interior was told: Dijon, Oissel, Nantes, Béziers, Aix-en-Provence, Goussainville, Nice, Olivet, Mérignac, as well as in Dunkirk and Mayotte. Each will have an ability “about a hundred seats», affirmed the minister.

Since 2017, the number of detention places has increased “from 1488 to 1869 places», We told Interior. In total, 15,922 people were detained last year in mainland France, and 27,643 overseas, according to the annual report of migrant defense associations. The government had already mentioned this objective of 3,000 places a few months ago.

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“Let’s stop being hypocrites»

This announcement comes a month before the examination in the Senate of the immigration bill, postponed several times, and which should make the expulsion of delinquent foreigners a priority. But another part of the text, on the regularization of undocumented workers in so-called “in tension», arouses hostility from the right.

Asked by readers of Parisian on this aspect, Gérald Darmanin promised that there would be “no draft» and that it was “to regularize, on a case-by-case basis, those who have been there for more than three years in France“. “Let’s stop being hypocrites“, he affirmed, ensuring that he was passing “(his) time receiving letters from parliamentarians of all parties to ask (him) for papers“.

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Such a measure, while France is already regularizing “7,000 people per year for this reason”, would also satisfy “all these entrepreneurs who ask us to support them», explained the minister. Faced with the displayed hostility of the Republicans, Gérald Darmanin recalled that the centrists (allies of the right-wing majority in the Senate) were, “in favor of this provision“. “Let’s discuss», he added, being optimistic about the chances of avoiding recourse to article 49-3 of the Constitution, which allows a text to be adopted without a vote in parliament.

“I am certain that we will find an agreement, in particular with the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher who is a great social Gaullist and who has no desire, I know, to see the LR have the same positions as the RN», added the minister, himself elected from the ranks of LR. Reiterating the date of November 6 for the examination of the text in the Senate, he called for “stop delaying its adoption“.

Finally on state medical aid (AME), reserved for undocumented immigrants, he said “favorable” but “personally» to the proposal to delete it for “transform it into AMU, emergency medical aid“. “This is not the government’s initial position” but “it is a good compromise which combines firmness and humanity and I will say it on the Senate bench“, he added.