There is near-universal agreement in France that authorities should detain migrants with deportation orders following a string of high-profile murders and rapes committed by aliens who should have been removed from the country, but weren’t.
A CSA survey for Le Journal du Dimanche has found that 86 per cent of the French public would support the systematic incarceration of illegal migrants while they are waiting to be deported.
Broken down by political leanings, 94 per cent of supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally were in favour of the measure, followed by 92 per cent of the centre-right Les Républicains, and 81 per cent of Macronist Renaissance voters.
Unsurprisingly, supporters of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon were the least likely to support jailing illegals ahead of deportation at 63 per cent. However, notably, Socialist Party backers were more likely than Macron voters to back the idea at 84 per cent.
The issue of OQTF “Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français” orders, which translates to an obligation to leave French territory, has become increasingly controversial over the failure of authorities to enforce removals promptly, as in the high-profile rape of Claire Geronimi, who has since become a vocal campaigner highlighting the shortcomings of the system.
Last week, Jordy Goukara, a 27-year-old illegal immigrant from the Central African Republic, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for raping Geronimi and another 19-year-old woman in November of 2023 in two upscale neighbourhoods of Paris.
The rapes came even though Goukara had racked up 11 criminal convictions and had been subjected to three OQTF deportation orders, meaning that he should not have been in France at the time of the attacks.
“My attacker had three OQTFs under his belt, so I had trouble understanding why he was still on French soil. Being raped, and the fact that it was a man who had an OQTF, is a double whammy. It shouldn’t happen. The state is supposed to protect us as citizens,” Claire Geronimi remarked.
The deportation system was also called into question following the brutal murder of a 19-year-old student, Philippine Le Noir de Carlan, in Paris last year. The suspected killer, a 22-year-old migrant from Morocco, had previously been jailed for rape and had an OQTF removal order prior to the murder.
The French government has long struggled to implement OQTF removal orders. Indeed, in 2022, 134,000 OQTF orders were issued; however, only 9,160 were actually fulfilled, resulting in a success rate of 6.9 per cent.
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