foreigners victims of “abusive” confinement in detention centers, denounces a report

Foreigners in an irregular situation suffered confinement “abusive”, “disproportionate” and “without discernment” in French administrative detention centers (CRA) in 2021. This is what denounces in their annual report, published Thursday, March 17, the five associations which come to their aid within the CRA.

“Many people were placed in administrative detention centers in 2021 without the essential discernment that must necessarily intervene before deciding on a measure of deprivation of liberty”, they write. These associations, including La Cimade or France Terre d’Asile, have also made the “observation of too often abusive and disproportionate confinement”.

In 2021, France, the first European country in terms of issuing deportation measures (OQTF, obligation to leave French territory), detained 42,353 people in an irregular situation pending deportation, including 26,485 for the Mayotte’s only CRA.

The average length of confinement reached 22 days in metropolitan France, up 32%. But migrant advocates have denounced the“uselessness” of these measures, in the context of the closure of many borders in 2021 due to the pandemic, which made many removals unfeasible.

This increase, they say, did not lead to more deportations, without providing figures. For the year 2021, the Ministry of the Interior has also not made public the rate of execution of the OQTFs, a sensitive subject which puts the government in difficulty, whose opposition regularly denounces the laxity in this matter.