Are foreigners held in administrative detention centers dangerous?

After Philippine’s murder, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wants to extend the period of detention of undocumented foreigners in administrative detention centers because, according to him, these people “present a certain number of dangers”.

The administrative detention centers (CRA) sadly returned to the news with the murder of the young Philippine, a 19-year-old student whose body was found on September 21 in Bois-de-Boulogne, in the Paris region. The suspect, a Moroccan under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), had already been convicted of rape, served a prison sentence, then had been taken to a CRA before leaving just before the facts. .

Since then, the Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau wants to extend the maximum period of detention of foreigners in an irregular situation in the CRAs to 210 days instead of 90 today. Questioned on RTL Thursday October 3, he declared that “the people who are in CRA today, believe me, they are people who present a certain number of dangers”. True or False?

In truth, it is not possible to affirm what Bruno Retailleau says. No report, no global psychological analysis has assessed in itself the dangerousness of the 46,955 people who were held in one of the 25 administrative detention centers in France in 2023, nor in 2022, nor in all previous years.

To verify the words of the Minister of the Interior, we must therefore return to the facts. The only element that could indicate a possible level of dangerousness of foreigners held in these centers is their criminal record. Little information is known on this subject, but we can find some in a report co-signed by five associations which intervene in administrative detention centers, including France Terre d’Asile and Cimade, and published in May 2024.

This independent work provides the conditions for arresting the 16,969 undocumented foreigners who were detained in the CRAs in France last year (the others were detained overseas, mainly in Mayotte). We learn that 26% of foreigners held in these centers were taken there directly after their release from prison. In other words, a quarter of foreigners held in the CRAs are there because they have been convicted and served a prison sentence, as was the case with the suspect in the Philippine murder.

The population of former prisoners has become increasingly significant in the CRAs in recent years, at the request of the Ministry of the Interior. 4,246 foreigners leaving prison were detained in 2023, compared to 3,935 in 2022. Each year since 2020, between 23 and 26% of foreigners detained in the CRAs leave prison. An increasing trend compared to the 2010s: around 8% between 2014 and 2017, then 13% in 2018 and 14% in 2019.

If we really want to broaden the focus as much as possible, we can also include foreigners who have been arrested because they are suspected of having committed an offense, but who have not been tried or convicted and who are therefore innocent from the point of view of the law. They represent 16% of people retained in the centers in 2023.

By adding the figure of 26 and that of 16, we arrive at 42%, or less than half of the foreigners detained in the centers who are there because they have broken or because they are suspected of having broken the law . The majority, 58%, are there just because they are undocumented. They were taken to a CRA after a simple check on the public highway (33.7% of those detained), a check at a station (3.9%), at the borders (3.6%) or on the road (3. 5%), or even after being arrested at their home, at their workplace, at a prefecture counter, in a police station while filing a complaint, on transport or in a court.

And again, these figures are very imperfect. The associations which wrote this report do not know what the former detainees held in the centers were sentenced for. They know even less about what is being accused of all those who were brought to a CRA after simple police custody, without having been tried or sentenced, and even less about the detailed lives of the others detained.

Contacted by True or False, Paul Chiron, responsible for support and legal actions at Cimade, affirms that he is “extremely rare” to come across people in the CRA who have been convicted of violence or rape, like the suspect in Philippine’s murder. For Paul Chiron, the 26% of detainees leaving prison represent “an agglomeration of lots of situations”. Most often, according to him, these are common law offenses, such as theft. He also cites the example of a person detained in a CRA who had only crossed the street when the pedestrian light was red.

The specialist affirms that it is impossible to draw up a single composite portrait of foreigners in an irregular situation who are held in the CRAs. Some had been in France for two days, others for 40 years and their residence permit has not been renewed. There were also 87 children, in 2023. Paul Chiron recalls that “dangerousness does not come into account” in the decision to place in an administrative detention center. “The only reason to end up in CRA is not to have papers.” When the CRAs were created in 1981, it was simply a matter of holding people there who were going to be deported in the coming days, for which it was not necessary to hold them for very long.

“It’s a fairly classic and redundant amalgam of the far right to link delinquency and immigration so that the French no longer want foreigners on their territory”observes the person in charge of legal actions at Cimade. “It demonstrates a desire for the rejection of others which is quite worrying.”