The interior minister, who was on a two-day visit on Saturday, expressed his desire to strengthen the means to combat illegal immigration on the French Indian Ocean island.
Gérald Darmanin, during a two-day visit to Mayotte on Saturday, told Dzaoudzi his desire to strengthen the means to combat illegal immigration to the French Indian Ocean island, particularly from neighboring Comoros.
The interior and overseas minister was then to go to the Mamoudzou gendarmerie barracks and “spend New Year’s Eve in the presence of elected officials and security forces”.
Already during his last visit to Mayotte in August, the technical and human resources had been increased to prevent the arrival of migrants in this archipelago halfway between Madagascar and Africa. Half of the population in the area, which includes two main islands and about thirty islets, is foreign.
The minister now shows the ambition of an “extremely strong paradigm shift in Mayotte” and says he wants to tackle migratory flows before the boats arrive on the shores of Mayotte.
After a sea voyage to test the effectiveness of a drone capable of locating boats five kilometers away, the minister announced “the creation of a GIR” (Interministerial Research Group) to study clandestine networks: “a special one Group of police and gendarmes and other administrations dealing with illegal work and irregular immigration,” he told the press.
“On December 27th a decree was published which stipulates that the Criminal Investigation Office, which I announced three months ago, should take action against irregular immigration and in particular smugglers, those smugglers […] is created here in Mayotte,” he said. “There will therefore be specialized judicial police investigators reporting directly to the judges, which saves a lot of time instead of calling in experts from mainland France or sending the files to mainland France,” he added.
The minister also insisted on the involvement of the Élysée and the rest of the government in this dossier: it will therefore be up to President Emmanuel Macron to decide “in the coming weeks” on this issue and in particular on the introduction of derogations from the right side of the floor on the territory.
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The arrival of migrants in Mayotte is not slowing down, from the Comoros archipelago but also from the Great Lakes of Africa, illustrated by the landing of around sixty people on Wednesday. On this subject, Gérald Darmanin promised a trip to the African countries concerned to facilitate the return of their nationals who have been denied asylum.
He also formalized the archipelago’s month-long maintenance of the group of twelve RAID police officers, who arrived in November as the area saw a fresh outbreak of violence between rival gangs.