Bilal grew up on the edge of a huge beach, photos of which he was scrolling through on his smartphone. (All first names in this article have been changed.) "Do you see how beautiful it is?" Bilal stopped on a photo of a cove. This was where the boat left Algeria. He's proud to show off all that sparkling blue he misses, even though he's grown to love mountains and snow.

Now aged 20, he has been living for almost two years somewhere in the south of France, a place he didn't choose, but where an organization sent him for his safety in the summer of 2022. Because he reported two adults who were forcing unaccompanied minors in the capital, like him, to commit robberies under the influence of psychotropic drugs, Bilal put himself in danger: The risk of reprisals was too high, and the possibility of rebuilding his life by staying in Paris was too slim.

When she met him for the first time in March 2022, Catherine Delanoë Daoud, who had been called in to help by the Hors la Rue organization monitoring the young man, discovered a tall teenager who "alternates between phases of excitement and long periods of depression." Despite Bilal's condition, the lawyer found him to have "great vitality," and "a great sense of humor." Browsing through the pale green file prepared by the organization, she was appalled by the long list of assaults he claimed to have suffered at the hands of those he initially regarded as "protectors." The medical reports and photos taken after one of his many assaults upset her. "I thought, 'This is bad.' I'd never seen so much raw flesh." What Bilal has been through was serious.

Poor man's drug

It's a story begins in one of the sprawling shantytowns surrounding Oran, in northwest Algeria. Bilal is the youngest of seven children. His father is a security guard and his mother a housewife. "It was hard," summed up Bilal, providing a rare account of the journey of unaccompanied minors – an issue French President Emmanuel Macron raised at his June 12 press conference, promising "better control" of the issue. With limited resources, an erratic schooling – Bilal didn't go to college – and the sadness that overtook the family after the death of his sister in 2014, life was difficult.

He was not yet 13 when he started working in his brother-in-law's butcher shop. He learned to gut chickens, make sausages, cut onions and handle spices. That was during the day. At night, he went out to sea. Bilal talks about sardine fishing like a dream. He loved it. "It was amazing," he recalled. "And when you eat your sardines, fresh from the sea... It's amazing!" He could talk about it for hours, "the big boat and the small one, the same one I took to leave home," the underwater light to attract the fish, the waiting. He described his movements in minute detail. "It was very tiring, but I loved it. Once, the net came up so full that he earned the equivalent of €50 for the night. That never happened again. He usually pocketed between €5 and €20 and a few sardines.

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