For nearly a year, Orléans has received, without the knowledge of municipal authorities, “about 500 homeless migrants transferred from Paris.” The revelation was made on Monday, March 25 by the mayor of the prefecture city of Loiret, Serge Grouard, who expressed his anger during a press conference.
“All of this is done in secret, it is shocking that people are moved more or less voluntarily, and it is shocking that the mayor and local officials are not informed about anything. Orléans is not meant to accommodate Paris’s crack hill,” the mayor denounced.
Alerted by rumors that migrants would be expelled from the capital to make room before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the services of the City of Orléans, he explained, “have acquired the certainty that since May 2023, every three weeks, a bus transports between 30 and 50 people from Paris to Orléans, migrants in irregular situations and homeless.”
“We are not here to compensate for the government’s powerlessness”
Upon their arrival, they are taken care of by an association that has entered into an agreement with the State and are accommodated for three weeks in a hotel since emergency accommodation facilities are full. After that, the municipality does not know what happens to them, whether they stay, leave elsewhere, or are interned in the brand new administrative detention center. “We are not here to compensate for the government’s powerlessness. Instead of offering solutions, we are getting rid of the problem. If they are in irregular situations, they must leave the territory,” the elected official added.
Faced with the “evasive” responses provided by the State services to the municipality’s questions, the mayor decided to contact the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin as well as the department’s parliamentarians.
