The Ocean Viking ship carrying 230 migrants on board arrived at the military port of Toulon this Friday at 8:50 a.m. In the process, its passengers began to disembark.
The prefect of Var Evence Richard made a comment in front of the press, in particular to enumerate the “important means” mobilized by the State, which represent “almost 600 people”.
“First at the level of police and security forces, some 240 officials to guard the place of accommodation, 125 members of the Air and Border Police, 38 customs officials, personnel from the DDSP (Central Directorate of Public Security), the gendarmerie of the Var and the Maritime Alps”, explained Evence Richard.
In the medical record, the senior official noted, among other things, the presence of SDIS (Departmental Fire and Rescue Service) and Samu. Finally, “to guarantee all the formalities, officials, agents of the prefecture, OFPRA staff (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) and Offi (French Office for Immigration and Integration) were also mobilized. .
Migrants located in a waiting room
Also present at the press conference, Éric Jalon, general director of immigration in France, clarified the “legal framework” in which the attention to migrants will be developed. This will be a location in what is called a “holding area.” This procedure “applies to persons of foreign nationality who enter the Schengen area without meeting the legal conditions to be authorized to do so.”
These people, explains Éric Jalon, “are not, therefore, authorized to enter the national territory” and are “obliged to remain” in the waiting area, also “under the control of the police services at the borders”.
The people cared for in this place “can stay there for up to twenty days or, in certain cases, when they request asylum between the 14th and the 20th, up to 26 days”, that is, the “maximum duration”. As for the initial placement period, it is four days.
“It is then the judge of liberties and detention who can authorize, at the request of the administration, continued detention for successive periods of eight days,” specified Éric Jalon.
security reviews
People served in the waiting area will be subject to “security controls, carried out by the competent services of the Ministry of the Interior and in particular by the DGSI (General Directorate of Internal Security)”.
The migrants will then have the opportunity to apply for asylum. In this case, an “interview with OFRPA agents will be organized in 48 business hours”, which mobilizes from this weekend, “16 agents who can carry out up to 90 interviews per day”. In addition, this interview does not “intend to rule on the asylum application but to determine whether or not it should be considered manifestly unfounded.”
In view of these exchanges, “significant interpretation capabilities” will be mobilized on site, but also remotely with a platform where “interpreters in many languages will be available”.
France will take care of a third of the migrants
Subsequently, “if OFPRA considers that the asylum request is not manifestly unfounded and, barring objections due to unsafe controls”, the migrants will be “led to places of accommodation”. But also in the “services in charge of initiating the examination, on the merits, of the asylum application”, or the “single window for asylum seekers”.
As for people whose “application for asylum would be manifestly unfounded or who would present a security risk”, they will be subject to “removal procedures” so that they “return to their country of origin”.
Finally, not everyone who arrives in France this Friday is destined to stay in the country. As Éric Jalon has recalled, “nine countries have already agreed to relocate”. This will take care of two thirds of the people who arrive in France.
Source: BFM TV
