Parliament extends detention of foreigners deemed dangerous

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" that would have allowed him to be "removed," according to Mr. Retailleau, who welcomed in front of his former senatorial colleagues the adoption of a text that "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 statement on Tuesday at the time of the MPs' vote.

"Threat of particular gravity"

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

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

The text provides for applying this maximum period of 210 days to foreigners whose "behavior constitutes a particularly serious threat to public order," as well as to those who have been convicted of certain serious crimes or offenses (murder, rape, drug trafficking, aggravated robbery with violence, etc.).

This would also affect foreigners sentenced to a ban on entering the country (ITF), or subject to a decision of expulsion or administrative ban from 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 "threat of particular gravity to public order" is a "vague concept, leaving the door open to arbitrary interpretations," 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.

Detention of asylum seekers

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 Interior Minister of "riding on the backs of news stories that fuel a kind of populist machine in a deadly race with the far right and its deadly 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 includes 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 even the possibility of taking fingerprints and taking identity photos under duress, in order to facilitate the identification of people.