Question 16983 — font

Summary

Mr. Jean-François Coulomme questions the Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories about aggressive and illegal police practices in the Channel against exiled people. On December 15, 2023, the Minister went to Calais, in Hauts-de-France, where a catastrophic humanitarian situation has been playing out since 2015, in order to defend the measures of his law on asylum and immigration. On this occasion, he prided himself on the security of the coastline and he came to announce new means for the ISF to fight against the departures of people exiled to England. The day before his visit, two people died while attempting to cross to the southern English coast on inflatable boats or “small boats”. For 10 years, the budget allocated to the fight against Channel crossings has peaked at 700 million euros. Yet, official figures show a gradual increase in Channel crossings from the French coast. Indeed, in 2021, the number of crossings doubled compared to 2020 and nearly 18,200 exiles reached the coasts of the United Kingdom aboard these makeshift boats, during the first nine months of 2021. This is twice as many as in the entire previous year (8,417 in 2020), the year for which the level was already four times higher than in 2019 (1,823). In 2023, 29,437 exiles reached English shores, compared to 45,774 in 2022, a record year, according to figures from the British Interior Ministry. In 2024, there will already be 4,300 crossings and 5 fatal accidents. However, as early as 2020, the Gris-Nez Regional Operational Surveillance and Rescue Center announced in its activity report a “ mass departures” and believed that “this is now a structural phenomenon, set to last”. Indeed, due to the intensification of customs, administrative and health checks on the way to the United Kingdom, linked to Brexit, small boats are becoming the preferred means of passage for migrants. While the budgets allocated to the fight against irregular crossings increase each year, so do the deaths, due to among other things, practices observed among French law enforcement, as demonstrated by the investigation by Julia Pascual (special correspondent in Calais and Loon-Plage), Tomas Statius (Lighthouse Reports) and Cellule Enquête video, released on March 23, 2024 in the newspaper Le Monde. Since 2018, the official version of the French Government has been that of respect for the law of the sea, which prohibits law enforcement from intervening to prevent the boat to move forward when the “small boat” is already at sea. However, this investigation demonstrates the opposite. Why did the ministry lie about this? How does the minister explain that France has become the armed wing of England? If this is not proof of the ineffectiveness of its security methods to respond to endemic problems, we can legitimately wonder if its policy should not be considered as responsible for the deaths caused by its strategy for managing migratory movements. Indeed, non-compliance with the restricted directive of November 10, 2022 which stipulates that “the framework for the action of means acting at sea (...) including in the 300-meter coastal strip (...) is that of search and rescue at sea” and “does not allow coercive actions to be carried out to combat illegal immigration” comes to reaffirm that its practices in the Channel since 2018 are illegal. In order to determine whether public taxpayers' money is used to finance the illegal practices of French law enforcement against exiled people trying to reach England, the MP urges him to support the creation of the "Commission of Inquiry to shed light on the consequences of the Le Touquet agreements on public action and the respect for the fundamental freedoms and rights of people in a situation of migration” from the political group of the MP. While four French prefectures communicated via the social network “X” via the hashtag “#savedesvies” this Friday March 23, 2024 at the end of the investigation, the practices that the minister supports in the Channel push the deputy to ask him if they should not have instead written #sacrifylives. How does the Minister of the Interior react to this investigation which reveals the ineffectiveness of the millions of public money invested to protect the English borders and does he intend to sanction officials who are guilty of illegal “pull back” practices, recorded by his ministry under the name “interceptions at sea”?

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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