An annual cost of around €1.8 billion, border controls that are "a poor deterrent," and a paltry number of OQTF's (obligations to leave French territory) issued: Everything in the 141-page report published by the Cour des Comptes (France's national Court of Audit) seems to attest to the country's powerlessness in the fight against illegal immigration. The quantified, documented findings clash head-on with what the government has said repeatedly. In October 2022, government spokesperson Olivier Véran repeated what Emmanuel Macron had mentioned as early as 2019 in an interview with the far-right magazine Valeurs Actuelles: that he would ensure that 100% of OQTFs were carried out – a "fantastical" claim, said Court of Auditors President Pierre Moscovici at a press conference on Thursday, January 4.
Admittedly, between the legal constraints of the EU rules that France is bound by and the lack of cooperation from certain countries in issuing consular passes, successive governments cannot be held entirely responsible. The same cannot be said of the organization of the services responsible for combating illegal immigration, the lack of interministerial understanding, or endless legislative changes – "133 amendments in less than 10 years" – sometimes motivated by media coverage of news stories.
As the law "becomes more complex," the ministry's pressure on prefectures to issue deportation orders or put people in administrative detention or under house arrest has revealed its perverse effects: Courts are congested, made worse by the fact that there are multiple ways to appeal. Litigation involving foreign nationals accounted for "41% of cases registered by administrative courts in 2021 (...) and 61% before administrative courts of appeal." As a result, the dissuasive nature of this policy remains highly questionable, since "the number of irregular crossings of French borders has been on the rise since 2015."
Worse still, in 2022, the rate of implementation of the 134,280 final OQTFs deemed enforceable issued by French prefectures and courts did not go over 12%. "Aware of its limited capacity to enforce OQTFs," noted the Court of Auditors, "the administration is concentrating its efforts on profiles presenting a threat to public order or with a recent criminal conviction, placing them more frequently in detention. Consequently, these profiles have higher removal rates."
The underlying structure of specialized services is showing its limits. On January 19, 2023, the day the magistrates from the audit institution visited the 117 kilometers of Italian border under reinforced control, fewer than 60 people were on duty, including a dozen national police reservists. The administrative detention centers, which are chronically understaffed, are not much better off: Out of a theoretical staffing level of 367, the Vincennes center outside Paris, only has 307 officers, 80% of whom are young police officers barely out of training.
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