French police empty another migrant camp in Paris three months before the Olympics

French police on Tuesday expelled a group of migrants from a makeshift camp in Paris near the Seine River. It is the latest operation in what humanitarian groups say is a “social cleansing” campaign ahead of the Olympics.

Before dawn, about 30 teenagers and young adults from West Africa, most of them minors trying to obtain residence papers in France, were awakened by police and asked to pack their tents and belongings.

“I was already scared, but I’m even more scared because I don’t know where to go,” said 16-year-old Boubacar Traore, adding that he fled conflict in Burkina Faso after arriving in France two months ago.

This kind of eviction and evacuation of migrant camps occurs every spring, after the end of the winter “truce”, during which time the French authorities suspend these actions.

But aid groups working with migrants and vulnerable people in the Paris region say the effort is intensifying ahead of the Paris Olympics, scheduled for July-August 2024.

The organizations say expelled people are being expelled from the capital rather than being offered asylum in the Paris region, where many asylum seekers have court dates.

“The authorities want the Olympic site to be clean,” said Elias Hufnagel, a volunteer with a support group for refugees and immigrants at the Paris camp, adding that authorities “don’t want tourists to see Paris as a city full of migrants and asylum seekers.”

Paris police said the operation was carried out for security reasons, namely because the camp was close to schools.

Authorities offered homeless young people the opportunity to move to Besançon, 400 kilometers southeast of Paris, on two buses and provide them with housing for three weeks, but most were reluctant to accept the offer, fearing they would be left even more isolated and without any According to plan, the tickets were subsequently sold out in three weeks.

The operation came days after French police carried out a large-scale eviction on April 17 of the country’s largest illegal housing unit in a former office building in the town of Vitry, south of Paris, displacing at least 400 immigrants.