Four hundred migrants were expelled Tuesday in 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 were distributed in 17 distributed buses”, to centers located in Pas -de -Calais and the Hauts-de-France region “, indicated the prefecture in a press release. According to it, these” illicit “occupations -” about 450 tents “- caused” serious problems of security, sanitation 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 have been seized – sleeping bags, tents – so tonight, those who remained there will be forced to sleep with nothing on their heads,” replied Pierre Roques, manager of the AFP. Migrant 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”. “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 nearby town of Marck, after falling heavily from a weight he was attempting to in hopes of rallying England.

Many families in Calais

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 “primary concern” is “to prevent the reconstitution” of the jungle. “We have an interest in regularly dismantling all these camps otherwise it will become the kingdom of smugglers. These are areas where migrants live in unworthy conditions, when we dismantle we systematically offer accommodation,” he told AFP .

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.

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