It's getting colder and colder, the clock is ticking and regional authorities are scrambling to meet President Emmanuel Macron's deadline: get migrants off France's streets and out of forest hideouts by year's end. That won't likely happen, and Macron's government is now tightening the screws: ramping up expulsions, raising pressure on economic migrants and allowing divisive ID checks in emergency shelters.
Critics contend that Macron's increasingly tough policy on migrants — though wrapped in a cloak of goodwill — contradicts his image as a humanist who defeated an anti-immigrant populist for the presidency, and has crossed a line passed by no other president in the land that prides itself as the cradle of human rights.
Macron said in a speech in July in Orleans before a group of new citizens that he wanted people "off the streets, out of the woods" by the end of 2017. "I want emergency lodgings everywhere."
While his words conveyed humanity, the underlying message bites. Macron has made clear he wouldn't accept economic migrants in France, wants those who don't qualify for asylum expelled and doesn't want them even trying to come to France.
The French president has been rolling out a multi-pronged approach that stretches to Africa, with points set up in Chad and Niger to pre-select those certain of gaining asylum — and weed out potential economic migrants.
At home, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has ordered prefects, regional representatives of the state, to crack down on illegal immigration, "act quickly" to expel those who fail to gain asylum and report results within weeks, according to a November order cited by the newspaper Le Monde.
A newer set of orders in December rang alarm bells. Collomb told regional authorities to set up "mobile teams" to run checks in emergency housing to ascertain the status of migrants. Emergency shelters are considered bedrocks of the French tradition of open arms to those in need and have long been considered untouchable, even by security authorities.The accent on security in dealing with immigration has appalled even some who support the centrist Macron.
On the ground, authorities are scrambling to show they are following the president's clear-the-streets orders. A camp of about 40 Afghan migrants was dismantled last week in the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France, and another was taken down in Macon in the east. On Thursday, a camp on the banks of the Seine river was the latest in Paris to be bulldozed, with 131 migrants taken to shelters. Police staked out a tollbooth north of Paris in an operation against the "migrant flux," stopping car after car to check for migrants who don't have residency documents.
Patrick Weil, among France's leading immigration specialists, said Macron "tweets about human rights and refugees during the day and at night gives the opposite orders." Weil contended on BFM-TV that Macron's approach is "the most extreme we've had since the war." It's coated "with a smile, with bonbons, but in practice it's a dagger," he said.