Immigration: Parliament adopts a law extending the detention of foreigners deemed dangerous

A measure dear to Bruno Retailleau has been adopted. Parliament definitively adopted, on Wednesday, July 9, a text extending the detention period for foreigners awaiting deportation and deemed dangerous to 210 days.

The bill by Republican Senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio was adopted successively on Tuesday by the National Assembly – by 303 votes to 168 – and then by the Senate on Wednesday – by 228 votes to 108, just before the parliamentary session was suspended at the end of the week.

Just in time, also, to offer the Minister of the Interior a small success in Parliament, he who has been advocating this measure since the assassination of the young Philippine, a student found dead in Paris in 2024.

His alleged murderer was a Moroccan subject to an order to leave French territory (OQTF), who had just been released from a detention center after several years in prison.

"Within a few days, the administration had the consular pass" which would have allowed him to be "removed" , according to Bruno Retailleau, who welcomed in front of his former senatorial colleagues the adoption of a text which "will protect the French" .

"The violence and brutality suffered by Philippine should lead to a consensus on the need to ensure the safety of everyone, everywhere," the victim's parents, Loic and Blandine Le Noir de Carlan, had already reacted in a press release on Tuesday at the time of the deputies' vote.

The debates also took a solemn turn after the death of LR MP Olivier Marleix , who was the rapporteur for the National Assembly and had reworked the bill so that it would suit both chambers of Parliament.

Currently, the maximum period of detention in administrative detention centres (CRA), where foreigners may be held pending expulsion in order to "prevent the risk of abduction" , is 90 days, except for those convicted of terrorism: it can then go up to 210 days, or seven months.

The text provides for applying this maximum duration of 210 days to foreigners whose "behavior constitutes a particularly serious threat to public order," as well as to those convicted of certain serious crimes or offenses (murder, rape, drug trafficking, aggravated robbery with violence, etc.). Also affected would be foreigners sentenced to a ban on entering the country (ITF), or subject to an expulsion or administrative ban on entering the country.

Several associations, including France Terre d'Asile and Cimade, warned last week against an extension that could apply to "a number" of people held in CRA. The "particularly serious threat to public order" is a "vague concept, leaving the door open to arbitrary interpretation," they expressed concern.

This prolonged detention, "in daily idleness and sometimes violence, will unnecessarily increase the suffering and trauma of those locked up," they added.

The left, up in arms, also denounces this as a useless measure, arguing that the extension of the average detention period (33 days in 2024, double that of 2020 according to a report by associations) has not succeeded in increasing the expulsion rate. In 2018, a law had already doubled the maximum detention period from 45 to 90 days.

Socialist Christophe Chaillou accused the Minister of the Interior of "surfing on news items feeding a sort of populist machine in a deadly race with the extreme right and its dire impulses."

"We respect the balance and we respect the rules of law," retorted Bruno Retailleau, arguing that European law allows for a retention period of up to 18 months.

The text also incorporates measures, sometimes rewritten, from the last immigration law, which were rejected by the Constitutional Council. Such as the detention of certain asylum seekers "whose behavior constitutes a threat to public order." Or the possibility of taking fingerprints and taking identity photos under duress, in order to facilitate the identification of individuals.