French police cleared the last migrant tent camp in northeast Paris as part of a plan to take migrants off the streets.
According to the authorities, the 427 migrants were living in 266 tents and makeshift shelters in a canal-side camp “strewn with waste and refuse, overrun by rats and giving off a pestilent and foul-smelling odour of urine and excrement”. The operation lasted two hours.
The country’s president Emanuel Macron vowed to clear the camps as part of his tougher stance on immigration. Last week, police moved more than 1,436 migrants from another camp in northern Paris.
The government had promised to clear all migrant camps from the city by the end of last year, in part by opening more shelters for asylum seekers, as well as by deporting those whose claims are rejected. Thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East have been fleeing war in their native countries.
“We are not going to resume a never-ending cycle of evacuations followed by new installations,” Paris police chief said.
French police clear last migrant camp in Paris
EPA-EFE/IAN LANGSDON
Police form a cordon at a large makeshift migrant camp along the Canal Saint Denis, in northern Paris, France, 30 May 2018. The camp, dubbed 'Millenaire' after the nearby shopping center, and home to an estimated 1,700 migrants, was peacefully cleared in a police operation which began at daybreak. The migrants boarded buses and will be relocated to shelters around the Paris area.
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