Gérald Darmanin asked the prefects on Thursday, November 17 to more firmly apply the obligations to leave French territory (OQTF) to ” all “ foreigners in an irregular situation and not only to “delinquent aliens”priority targets of his immigration bill.
Since 2020, 3,500 foreigners “constituting a threat to public order” were expelled, according to the Interior Ministry. “I ask you to apply to all foreigners under OQTF the method used for monitoring delinquent foreigners”, writes the Minister of the Interior in an instruction consulted by Agence France-Presse (AFP). For this, Gérald Darmanin calls on the prefects to issue these measures “following an arrest or refusal of a residence permit” and D’“exercise a real “police of the stay””. In addition to the reminder of the law already applicable, it requests the registration “systematic” persons who are the subject of an OQTF in the file of wanted persons (FPR) in order to “count all foreigners under OQTF leaving the national territory, which is not the case today”.
According to him, this systematic registration would make it possible to better assess the rate of execution of OQTFs, currently estimated at less than 10% out of an annual total of 120,000 measures. The right and the extreme right regularly denounce this rate of execution of OQTFs, one of the lowest in Europe, a symbol, according to them, of the impotence of the State in terms of expulsions. This recurring debate was revived by the murder of Lola, a 12-year-old girl, whose suspect is an Algerian national under the influence of an OQTF.
The number of these measures carried out is up by 22% in 2022, says the minister in his instruction. Gérald Darmanin also asks that foreigners under OQTF be “systematically” under house arrest, “at a trusted address” and no “of convenience”, when they cannot be placed in an administrative detention centre. He also recalls his desire to make the lives of people under OQTF « impossible » by obtaining the suspension of their social rights. At the beginning of 2023, the Minister of the Interior must present a bill aimed, among other things, at reforming asylum procedures to achieve more expulsions, in particular by dividing by three the possibilities of appeal.