Paris (AFP)

Several hundred migrants must be evacuated from the Parisian camp at Porte d'Aubervilliers on Tuesday morning, two months after the dismantling of a neighboring site, in order to fulfill the government's promise to empty the northeast of Paris from these unsanitary camps.

"This Tuesday (...), the police prefecture (PP) and the prefecture of the Ile-de-France region (Prif) will dismantle the illegal camps set up at the Porte d'Aubervilliers, as well that with the concomitant sheltering of their occupants ", indicated the PP in a press release.

Between 900 and 1,800 people have settled in these camps which have taken on the appearance of shanty towns on the edge of the ring road in recent weeks, according to a count provided by the Regional Prefecture.

Whether in gymnasiums or dedicated centers, places have been mobilized to accommodate "everyone", she told AFP.

The authorities' doctrine in the management of these camps changed during the evacuation of some 1,600 people straddling Paris and the Seine-Saint-Denis, notably at Porte de la Chapelle, on November 7.

The day after Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that these sites constituting an "anomaly" in the accommodation system were to be evacuated before the end of 2019, the police headquarters had lent a helping hand to Prif - which usually manages the sheltering operations -, by operating a secure turn of the screw: no reinstallation on the Porte de la Chapelle is possible since, thanks to an imposing system of law enforcement.

This is also what is planned at the Porte d'Aubervilliers, confirmed to AFP the prefecture of police, explaining that 24-hour patrols will prevent migrants from setting up tents there.

- "Endless camp-evacuation cycle" -

However, with this operation, the government's commitment is still not kept: in the two-month interval between the dismantling of Porte de la Chapelle and that of Aubervilliers, around 300 migrants settled in La Villette , or at the next door.

The dismantling of this camp? "We will come there", we respond to the Prif, even if it will not be "not for now".

"We are only postponing the problem," deplores for his part the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of refugees, Dominique Versini, who fears that it will again be necessary "to wait two, three months" before this operation.

However, she admits, Tuesday's evacuation, "the 60th major sheltering operation since 2015", is "good for the migrants, who live in appalling conditions, and for the residents, who do not 'can do more.'

At the Porte d'Aubervilliers, the migrants who came out of the accommodation structures after the last operation came to inflate this camp which already existed and where the drug addicts who were concentrated on the nearby "crack hill" were also added.

The latter, says the regional prefecture, will be supported by "specialized structures".

"This camp, soon to be dismantled, is added to the list of so many other places in north-eastern Paris which together illustrate the endless camp-evacuation cycle in progress for four years in Paris", regrets the association Utopia56, who helps migrants.

The "administrative blockages", continues Utopia56, "have as consequences the maintenance on the street of a majority of the inhabitants of the camps and therefore the inexorable reformation of new camps after the dismantling."

© 2020 AFP