In 2023, the number of foreign offenders deported from France has increased by 30% compared to last year. 4,686 people had to leave the territory, according to the Ministry of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin.
In the year 2023 which has just ended, the Ministry of the Interior lists 4,686 “delinquent foreigners” who were expelled from France and “returned to their country of origin”. Two weeks after the adoption of the immigration law, Thursday January 4, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin announced that the number of people expelled had increased by 30% compared to the previous year and “more than double of the number of 2021”. The figures for 2023 correspond to “effective removals upon leaving administrative detention centers and the execution of ministerial expulsion orders”, he specifies. But they exclude people expelled because of their registration in the File of reports for the prevention of radicalization of a terrorist nature (FSPRT).
What will immigration law change?
The areas to which the most people have been sent are, in order, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and central Europe, according to information from the Ministry of the Interior to Agence France Presse (AFP ). Gérard Darmanin “welcomed this first assessment” and asked the prefects, whom he gathered on Thursday morning at Place Beauvau, “to further accelerate in this area, in particular thanks to the contributions of the immigration law since this it will be promulgated”, according to his entourage. The immigration law provides for the broadening of the criteria for expulsion: people in a legal situation, even those who arrived in France before the age of 13 or who have a French spouse, may be asked to leave the territory.
But if Gérald Darmanin welcomed these figures, the same day the Court of Auditors considered the results of the migration policy mediocre in relation to the financial means committed. A judgment particularly focused on the fight against irregular immigration. Were the Interior Minister’s statements aimed at attracting attention elsewhere?