Detention centers for migrants in France increasingly resemble prisons

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Barbed wire, handcuffs ... The detention centers, where illegal immigrants are locked up awaiting their expulsion, are increasingly taking on a "prison aspect" in "complete disrepair with their function", denounced this Wednesday the prison controller in its annual report.

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His conclusions are edifying. In 2019, Adeline Hazan and her teams visited four of the administrative detention centers (CRA) and a border waiting area. For the Comptroller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL), not only has there been no "  improvement  " over the past year, but she has noted an "  absence of awareness of the issue of fundamental rights  ”.

But that's not all. "  The internal organization and perimeter security of the centers indeed gives the impression of a prison environment with partitioned spaces, complicated internal circulation and fences topped with barbed wire  ", writes the CGLPL in its report on the year 2019 , clarifying that "  the waiting area visited does not escape this gradual shift towards a prison aspect  ".

Disciplinary isolation

"  Handcuffing is systematic for all movements, most often in the back," continues the report. The practice of disciplinary isolation [...], without being massive, is not uncommon even though nothing provides for it [...], any restriction of freedom within the place must be provided for by law and accompanied by a procedure guaranteeing the rights of the defense.  "

In the CRAs "  it is the whole regime to which people are subjected which comes close to the prison, with deprivations of fundamental freedoms, such as the impossibility of having a smartphone or accessing the internet  ", confirms to AFP David Rohi, head of retention issues at the La Cimade association, which provides legal assistance in 8 of the 24 centers in France. "  In some aspects, the conditions of detention are even worse than in prison,  " he said, taking the example of the ban on having a television in the bedroom.

The @CGLPL publishes its 2019 activity report today (Dalloz editions).
See the press kit online: https://t.co/nVAzwawusH pic.twitter.com/CRWGpRpSOH

Occupancy rate drops with pandemic

In addition, in its report, the CGLPL also regrets that the maximum length of detention doubled on January 1, 2019, from 45 to 90 days, an extension which was accompanied by additional tensions, with "  suicides or suicide attempts [which] seem to be more frequent  ”.

The report does not take into account the period of the coronavirus-related health crisis, a period which is not taken into account by the report, the occupancy rate of CRAs, which can accommodate 1,900 people in total, has heavily fall. At the end of April, a hundred illegal immigrants were locked up there.

► Listen: Coronavirus: In Calais, associations denounce the total abandonment of migrants

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