A helicopter, a Raid team dropped on the roof of a building, tear gas, explosives to open the doors: it is a veritable anti-terrorist arsenal which was deployed on February 11 to urgently evacuate the twenty members of the Calais Housing collective for all who occupied an inhabited building slated for demolition. The activists, who have been there since February 3, had earlier said they did not want to leave as long as their demands – an end to evictions from migrant camps every 48 hours, regularization of squats in the city, immediate requisition of all buildings empty – were not heard.

Two days earlier, the landlord Terre d’Opale Habitat filed an application for interim relief with the Boulogne-sur-Mer court, which signed the order for the evacuation of the building the next day. However, the day before the operation, the lawyer for one of the occupants received a response from the court confirming that no eviction had been requested. A timing that is all the more troubling since, on February 10, the day the evacuation order was signed, the mayor (LR) of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, announced her support for Emmanuel Macron, dealing one more blow to the breathless campaign of Valérie Pécresse. In his speech granted to Figaro, the city councilor speaks in particular of Calais as a “city to exhibit” which was able to count on the President, but also on a Minister of the Interior “attentive listening”, having brought “the reinforcements we requested”.

In return, Gérald Darmanin did not fail to welcome this new support, proving that Ms. Bouchart “saw daily the difficult but energetic work of the President of the Republic to help Calais”. With the simultaneity of these mutual congratulations, this displayed support and anti-migrant operations worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, the President’s campaign announces a most unbridled manipulative strategy.