France held over 43,000 people of foreign origin, irregular immigrants last year: Report

By Umit Donmez

PARIS (AA) – France arrested over 43,000 people of foreign origin, including irregular immigrants, last year and kept them in various detention centers, according to a report prepared by migrants' rights organizations and published on Wednesday. The report stressed that 60% of them were on the Mayotte archipelago in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique.

In their joint report, Forum refugees, France terre d'asile, and three other well-known migrants' rights organizations stated that the French authorities detained 43,565 people of foreign origin and irregular immigrants in 2022, including Algerians (23.5%), Albanians (11.6%), Moroccans (8.9%), Tunisians (8.2%), Afghans (5.1%), and Romanians (4.5%).

The report said 94.1% of them were men, 4.8% were women, and 0.6% were children accompanying their parent(s).

Just over a third of them (15,922 people) were held in administrative detention centers in France, while the majority (27,643 people) were held in overseas detention centers, particularly those on the Mayotte islands, which alone housed nearly 60%, according to the report.

The report noted that those detained were held for an average of 23 days, though some were held for three months and in deplorable conditions.

After the country’s interior minister’s instructions, the report said, most people were locked up for clearly “derisory reasons,” such as "looking suspicious, spitting on the sidewalk, slowing down car traffic."