Alexis de La Fléchère / Photo credits: Antoine Merlet / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 9:40 a.m., March 5, 2024
Undocumented migrants who know their rights well are helped by certain associations.
For example, an unaccompanied minor must be taken care of and cannot be deported.
Departmental services are therefore saturated and want to make things happen.
Faced with the impossibility of expelling an isolated minor, certain departmental services quickly found themselves saturated.
The Territoire de Belfort was the first French department to vote, last September, to refuse to take care of unaccompanied foreign minors.
Then in December, it was Ain which said stop, suspending, for three months, the reception of these populations for which it is responsible.
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What is an unaccompanied minor?
Bone tests
In Mayenne, Olivier Richefou, also overwhelmed, had no choice but to take out the checkbook.
“I had to add 1 million euros more to the 2024 budget. I remind you that an unaccompanied minor costs the departmental council between 40 and 50,000 € per year,” reported the president of the departmental council of the Mayenne.
Costs which increase inexorably under the pressure of organized networks of children of indeterminate age, according to Pierre Bédier, in Yvelines.
“We know well that there are sectors which bring adults, but which take advantage of French legislation to try to stay on national territory and have a tailor-made welcome due to their status as minors,” declared the president of the Yvelines departmental council.
Currently, bone tests are performed with a fairly variable margin of error.
In the best case, it is six months, but it can go up to two years and the doubt benefits the applicants.