The Lyon Saint-Exupéry administrative detention center (CRA) is brand new. He just celebrated his first birthday in January. Its 140 places had even been inaugurated by the Minister of the Interior during his visit to Lyon in August. Gérald Darmanin had also taken the opportunity to announce the opening of another similar establishment in 2023, this new CRA being a “pilot project” supposed to be duplicated everywhere in France.
However, in these new premises, “it is impossible to provide care”, says doctor Thomas Millot. To the point where the entire medical team – made up of five nurses and this doctor – decided to leave in mid-December.
The building was “poorly constructed”
Thomas Millot worked for five years at the Lyon CRA. By “going there”, he was aware of the working conditions. He “knew” what caring for “persons detained, without papers, destined for removal” – the word used by the State services “not to say expulsion” – implied. He has been working in the closed environment for more than ten years.
From 2017 to 2022, this health professional then spent five and a half days a week providing care at the center, “it was bearable, livable”, he qualifies. What prompted him to leave was the move near the airport. “It was badly built and the services did not consider it useful to put the police inside”, continues the doctor, tired of this system.
“After the events of this summer, the prefecture wanted, in a way, to clean up the delinquency by taking all those who put the construction site in the street to lock them up in this center. » The doctor is firm: « The CRA is the tool of the State which makes it possible to imprison undocumented people for three months without needing justice ». According to him, these individuals “return to where they were” once they are released and are not necessarily expelled from the country.
“We cannot lock people up and close the door”
The atmosphere has become even “more aggressive” from the summer episodes and “the will of the prefect”. “All that combined with the poorly thought out building and without the police, it was impossible to do medicine, he says. You can’t lock people in and close the door. We need people in contact with the prisoners. A beautiful building with locks is not enough. »
Since the departure of the medical team, that is to say, more than a month, “there has been a long period without anyone”. Thomas Millot is linked to that of Lyon Sud, managed by the Hospices Civiles de Lyon (HCL). He then knows that to ensure “continuity in care” and because the State cannot lock people up without providing a health system, “it is a private company that does temporary medical work” which has been called upon. .
What the prefecture confirms in these terms: “A work of recruitment, integration and retention of medical staff is carried out jointly by the State and the Hospices Civiles de Lyon (HCL)”. She affirms that the care “is provided for the detainees by a partnership set up by the HCL with a full-time paramedical presence, the presence of a doctor up to 3.5 half-days per week, supplemented by a project setting up a teleconsultation system”.
The former CRA doctor concludes: “No one in the public service wants to work in these conditions anymore”.
Complaints made
Conditions that he wanted to improve during the years he worked for the CRA. Thomas Millot spent his time asking “to have a shrink on site, to organize for dental care, as well as in addictology”. This last specificity, he ended up passing it to “have all the hats” in his next missions. He summarizes: “Finally, the fundamental does not exist”. Before adding: “We also asked to have a policeman on duty to ensure our safety”.
The Rhône prefecture, for its part, claims to have heard these complaints. “Meetings are regularly organized to improve operations,” she explains. Currently, the State services are working on “adjustments to the functioning of the premises to secure as much as possible the working conditions of the medical personnel vis-à-vis the detainees, some of whose profiles may be violent, and to ensure the care of the latter ” .
According to the one who is now an emergency doctor at the SMUR in Villefranche-sur-Saône, the CRA in Lyon, is “a Titanic”. “It takes water from all sides,” he says. An important detail to share then this experimentation is intended to multiply. “Our improvements will be used for the others which will open later”, answers the prefecture.