The reinforced controls on the Franco-Italian border, decided by Paris after the refusal of Rome from laissez-faire to the humanitarian Ocean Viking ship, are effectifs after the jeudi sur “plus d’une dizaine” of points of passage, as indicated by the police French.
It is about “controlling the stations, the secondary axes in particular near Menton but also Sospel or Breil-sur-Roya (Alpes-Maritimes), the motorway axes, in particular the A8, the exits, the tolls and the highway”. , specified the General Directorate of the National Police (DGPN).
Chin Control
Illustration at the Menton Garavan station, the first in Ventimiglia, Italy, where each train is searched from top to bottom for long “H24 and 7/7” minutes, according to Commissioner Emmanuelle Joubert, who heads the Police at the Borders (PAF ) in the Alpes-Maritimes.
This Friday, on the regional express train at 4:10 p.m., a 14-year-old boy had to get off the train. He left his town of Siguiri, in Guinea, to join France, without wanting to specify the date of his departure.
“We take that one to the border post and as a minor they are going to deliver him to a children’s home,” explained a police officer from the operational reserve.
“The more we are, the narrower the border will be”
Checks are also carried out on the road, at the two border posts in Menton. At the Saint-Louis post, French police hand over immigrants who are denied entry to France to their Italian counterparts.
This Friday, early in the afternoon, a dozen immigrants who were notified of this non-admission thus crossed the border again on foot, heading for Italy, leaving the small barracks adjoining the border post whose reception conditions they periodically denounce. refugee support associations. and the defense of human rights.
“The more we are, the more the border will be sealed”, estimates Emmanuelle Joubert, indicating that to date more than 28,000 non-admissions (or refusals of entry) to foreigners in an irregular situation in the Alps have already been notified. -Maritime since the beginning of the year.
Reinforcement of controls “over various departments”
Nearly 500 additional police and gendarmes will be mobilized to carry out checks at these “authorized crossing points (PPA)”, to guarantee “H24 security”, according to the French police.
If most of the axes of entry of immigrants to France are located in the Maritime Alps, “which concentrate two thirds of non-entries in 2022”, according to the DGPN, the reinforcement of controls “is nevertheless extended to several departments with mountain areas. and the different major international axes”.
The device should be ready by Sunday and is “separate from the police mobilized to guarantee the safety and escort of the Ocean Viking migrants,” according to the DGPN.
After three weeks of wandering in vain in search of a safe port in Italy, the humanitarian ship Ocean Viking, carrying 230 migrants rescued from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, was received in France on Friday.
Source: BFM TV
