France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, and his party Les Républicains (LR) are moving to end the decades-long monopoly on providing legal advice held by left-leaning NGOs inside migrant detention centres. A new Senate bill seeks to strip NGOs such as Cimade and France terre d’asile of their exclusive role providing legal assistance to undocumented migrants awaiting expulsion. In their place, the government wants a more neutral, accountable system without publicly funded activists obstructing its deportation policy.
Critics argue that activist lawyers file migrant appeals in large volumes, often with little legal merit. These automatic suspensions delay deportations
The bill, tabled by Les Républicains, is part of a broader crackdown. It proposes to end the closed system by which only a select few publicly funded NGOs are allowed to operate in France’s Centres de Rétention Administrative (migrant detention centres). These are closed facilities where migrants are held prior to expulsion. In practice, they often house individuals who are being expelled for specific reasons, such as having served a prison sentence for violent crime.
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