A hundred young foreigners expelled from a former retirement home
Epilogue with tear gas for the former Ehpad des Tourelles, on the outskirts of Toulouse; From 7 a.m. this Friday morning, CRS columns entered the building to expel, in application of a Justice decision, the hundred young foreigners who lived there. According to the associations that follow them, these young people are mainly from West Africa but they also come from Asia or North Africa.
Among them Sami, an Algerian. “I arrived in France a year ago, I’m not yet 18,” he told AFP, squatting next to a large plastic bag containing all his belongings. I never thought I would be treated like a criminal. “We don’t deserve this. Certainly, we are Africans but we are not animals”, repeated in loop Mohamad, a Guinean under the blow of the emotion.
“Tonight, they don’t know where they sleep, dozens of young people have found themselves homeless without any alternative accommodation,” laments Jennifer Gruman, from the AutonoMIE collective and the Tous-tes En Classe 31 (TEC 31) association.
Change of ownership
Most of the young people concerned have been declared adults by the departmental council of Haute-Garonne but have filed an appeal with the courts to have their minority recognized and to obtain the status of unaccompanied minors.
The Haute-Garonne prefecture indicates that this evacuation “took place without altercation or arrest”. According to her, only three of the young people accepted administrative care. All the others refused to find the state services that were there. “We can only deplore this refusal, because the interviews were intended to lead to possible proposals for shelter, according to the profile of each”, adds the prefecture.
The city and the metropolis of Toulouse had set up in 2019 at Les Tourelles “a temporary accommodation system” for several dozen of these young people, with the support of several associations. Subsequently, the municipal center for social action (CCAS), which became the owner of the building of the former Ehpad, decided to close it on January 25, 2022 and ordered the occupants to leave the premises.
The administrative court of Toulouse had given him reason at the beginning of May 2022.