(Lille) French law enforcement evacuated a camp of 350 migrants in Calais on Thursday, where exiles continue to flock in the hope of reaching the English coast, the prefecture announced.
According to the prefect Jacques Billant, present on the spot, this camp installed for several months on a private ground, constituted “the largest site of fixation of the migrants in Calais”.
Its evacuation, following court decisions handed down in March, was “absolutely necessary” in the face of the “situation of insecurity and unsanitary conditions” prevailing on the site, he underlined.
According to him, “all” of the migrants present on Thursday morning, “nearly 300 people”, agreed to be transported to reception centers in the north of France during an operation carried out “calmly”. Five irregular migrants were arrested, the prefecture said.
Also present, the coordinator of the Auberge des migrants, Pierre Roques, said he saw around fifty people leave the camp on their own.
He denounces for the 300 others “forced sheltering”. “If they don’t get on the buses, they are arrested, they have no choice,” he says.
The evacuated migrants “will return to Calais in two or three days as usual and they will have no more business”, he lamented, claiming to have seen lacerated tents with knives and personal effects scattered by earth.
On Wednesday, a Sudanese migrant died, hit by a heavy truck in which he was trying to get on to reach England.
“It was someone who lived on this camp and his relatives traumatized by the event were expelled this morning”, lamented Pierre Roques.
The French authorities claim on the northern coast of France to fight against any “point of fixation” of the exiles who have been flocking for years in the hope of rallying the English coasts.
Some 46,000 of them managed to cross the Channel in precarious boats in 2022, a record, and 8,000 were rescued in French waters.