Will a former EDF holiday center in Menton be used to manage the reception of unaccompanied minors (UMAs) in the Alpes-Maritimes? For the municipality, requested by 20 minutes, the decision is “a priori” recorded even if work to bring it up to standard is necessary. But the departmental council, which is responsible for these migrants who have not reached the age of majority, assures for its part that it “has not commented on this site”.
Not yet anyway. Community agents recently visited this building located on the heights of the city which could add around fifty places to the community’s largely saturated accommodation capacities.
More than double compared to 2022
According to the authorities, the number of unaccompanied minors coming from Italy has doubled since the start of the year in the Alpes-Maritimes department. From January 1 to August 25, 3,950 of these minor migrants, mainly coming from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Tunisia and Sudan, were “intercepted and then placed in shelters”. Over the same period, in 2022, there were 1,925. The reception system has a thousand places.
“Under these conditions, minors must park for one, two or three days in the premises of the Border Police in Menton” before being taken into care by the departmental services, the prefecture told AFP at the end of the summer. A situation which has been denounced by migrant aid associations.
The state’s call for help
Faced with the influx of unaccompanied minors into the department, its president Charles-Ange Ginésy (LR) has, on numerous occasions, challenged the government. In a letter again addressed to the President of the Republic, on September 20, the elected official “reiterates [son] call for the State (…) to take charge of the reception and guidance of unaccompanied minors at the Franco-Italian border with the financial, logistical and human resources commensurate with this exceptional situation.”
A week earlier, Gérald Darmanin had gone to Menton with the promise of a reinforcement of the “boarder force” installed at this border. “A doubling of customs staff” and “a doubling of Sentinel staff” were planned. Nothing, however, had been announced to relieve the reception structures for the youngest migrants. “Miners do not depend on the Ministry of the Interior,” the minister said in the columns of Nice morning.