“We have to be much stronger on the judiciary” and that we “be smarter to fight against the spiral of irregular immigration”, considers Gérald Darmanin

The Minister of the Interior and Overseas is visiting until Sunday in the department, the poorest in France, with an explosive social and security situation. The government launched there two months ago, the operation “Wuambushu” or “recovery” in Mahorais.

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Ambdilwahédou Soumaïla, Mayor of Mamoudzou and Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, in Mamoudzou (Mayotte), June 24, 2023. (BORIS LOUMAGNE / FRANCEINFO)

“What is needed now is that we are much stronger on the judiciary” in Mayotte “to challenge the sectors [criminelles] and not just to restore public order, which we did”, estimates Gérald Darmanin, Sunday June 25 on franceinfo. The Minister of the Interior and Overseas has been traveling since Saturday in the 101st French department to defend the “Wuambushu” operation, which “is bearing fruit”.

Launched two months ago to “fight against crime, illegal immigration and unsanitary housing”, the operation will be extended. Gérald Darmanin specifies that the government will “continue to put a lot of police and gendarmes on the spot”. He recalls that 1,800 police and gendarmes are currently deployed in Mayotte “and for a month things will continue like this”. The police will remain present on the archipelago but there will be “perhaps fewer mobile gendarmes and a little more judicial gendarmes”. If the efforts will focus a little more on the judiciary, it is because the State has realized “that the criminal networks organize themselves differently in the face of the very large mass of law enforcement“.

The Minister of the Interior recalls that “Security is Mayotte’s number one priority”. It is not however a “goal in itself” but rather “a means to develop economic, touristic and cultural life”. Gérald Darmanin indeed considers that “Mayotte is a magnificent archipelago which could have this tourist activity, but it does not have it for security reasons”.

>>> Operation Wuambushu in Mayotte: a month after the demolition of the Talus 2 slum, its former inhabitants live “scattered” and “hopeless”

Objective: “destroy a thousand slums by the end of the year

Gérald Darmanin also highlights the fight against unsanitary housing, which is another of the ambitions of the “Wuambushu” operation with the destruction of slums. For the moment“275 slums have been destroyed”according to the minister who reaffirms the objective “to destroy a thousand of them by the end of the year”. He judges this operation “important, because in these slums there is a criminal ecosystem, where there is prostitution of minors, arms trafficking and where part of the population cannot access”. Gérald Darmanin indicates that if it is necessary to destroy these slums, it is also for “rebuild just after social housing and high schools”.


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