Guy Bennaroche and Guillaume Gontard, two environmentalist senators, visiting Thursday the border police station (PAF) in Menton (Alpes-Maritimes), where many migrants from Italy arrive, considered that this is made of a place of deprivation of liberty which must be supervised. Every day, dozens of migrants are arrested along the Franco-Italian border and taken to this police station, where almost all of them, with the exception of minors, are subject to a non-admission procedure.
Officially, the PAF post is a place of “shelter” while everyone’s situation is assessed and the people are handed over to the Italian authorities. But this can take long hours and in practice migrants are locked up.
“Beyond four hours in the premises, there is deprivation of liberty and therefore there are rights which must apply,” said Guillaume Gontard, president of the group, who has visited many similar places since 2017 and spent more than 1h30 in that of Menton.
A complete packed lunch instead of a madeleine
The only notable improvement: during their first visit in 2017, each migrant received a madeleine. From now on, they are entitled to a packed lunch with a sandwich, a salad and a bottle of water. But the premises are still cramped and spartan, even for minors. Thursday morning, the two senators saw a Kurdish woman from Turkey with her ten-year-old son and eight young people waiting in a small room equipped with only a few mattresses.
“Nothing is changing, we are sinking into incoherence. All our visits show a system that pushes away from the rule of law. Like not letting people apply for asylum,” he denounced.
“We spend crazy money”
The environmental group of the Senate has thus tabled an amendment to the immigration law, the examination of which begins Monday in the upper house, demanding that these places be considered as waiting areas, as exist in airports, or centers administrative detention.
Guy Bennaroche, senator from Bouches-du-Rhône, also protested against the return to Italy of young people declaring themselves minors after a simple assessment by department agents. “Maybe the motives are good, but it must be regulated.”
“This puts PAF agents in difficulty, facing missions that are not supervised and not coherent,” explained Guillaume Gontard. “We spend crazy money and that doesn’t stop anything. Even the PAF agents admit it half-heartedly: in the end they all pass.”