The total closure and dismantling of the Calais Jungle migrant camp hasn’t dissuaded new migrants from arriving there, and French authorities don’t know what to do with them.
The Calais Jungle has largely disappeared thanks to the efforts of the French government and courts who gave the go ahead to relocate the thousands of migrants trying to illegally hop over to Britain.
The clearing of the camp has been deemed a success by many but new migrants have not been dissuaded from appearing at the camp in hopes of getting to the UK reports German broadcaster N-TV.
The makeshift residences for the migrants who were living in the Jungle have become full as the French government anticipated a set amount of people to house before redistributing them to various asylum centres around the country. The new arrivals are making that task harder as there is simply no space for them.
Prefect Fabienne Buccio said the migrants are coming from other parts of France to the camp but also from other countries. “We have seen migrants from Germany, Paris and other places,” he said.
Mr. Buccio and others assumed that the population of the Calais Jungle was around 6,000 and accordingly only set up accommodation for that estimate. Many groups such as Médecins du Monde have claimed that between two and three thousand migrants simply left the camp before the French authorities arrived to dismantle it, some travelling to Paris and others moving to a different part of Calais.
Jacques Toubon, the French Human Rights Commissioner, has highlighted the growing trend of underage migrants, something that has been an issue in neighbouring Germany where underage migrants who commit crimes are often impossible to deport. Toubon estimates there are over 1000 underage migrants and has called on the French and British governments to accommodate them.
The “underage” migrants who have already come to Britain have caused controversy when it was shown that many of them weren’t underage at all. the Home Office even admitted that many of the migrants were adult men. The stir led to an outcry from the left and celebrities like Lily Allen who decried critics of the government’s decision to bring in the migrants as “nazis.”
Since the beginning of the operation to demolish the jungle camp the underage migrants have been kept in separate accommodation for their own safety. The accommodation soon filled to capacity and now many of the migrants have been forced to sleep outdoors.
Despite the new arrivals to the jungle Prefect Buccio has assured the public that the era of the Calais Jungle has finally come to an end.