Parliament approved on Tuesday June 16 the extension of the administrative detention period for foreigners in an irregular situation and deemed dangerous, a measure criticized on the left but presented on the right and in the center as a response to the murder of the young Filipina in 2024.
After the Senate vote on Monday, the deputies gave the final green light to the bill (345 votes for, 177 against) carried by Renaissance elected official Charles Rodwell and supported by the government, the right and the National Rally. In complete shock after the death of Lyhanna, 11 years old, the deputies summoned the memory of another tragedy, that of the murder of the student Philippine, which had aroused the emotion of the political class.
“Philippine lived in my constituency. His family still lives there (…). It is in (his) memory that we carry this text,” launched Charles Rodwell; while the Minister of the Interior Laurent Nunez welcomed a text which “draws the lessons of this tragedy” by correcting “objective dysfunctions”. The suspect, a Moroccan indicted for “murder accompanied by another repeat crime” as well as for “repeated rape”, was under an obligation to leave the territory (OQTF) and had just come out of detention.
Illegal foreigners may be detained in an administrative detention center (CRA) with a view to their expulsion if there is a risk that they will escape. Currently, the maximum detention period is 90 days, or 180 days for those convicted of terrorism.
Deputy Rodwell’s text extends this maximum duration to 210 days on an “exceptional” basis, provided that these foreigners are subject to a removal measure from the territory, and that they represent a “real, present and particularly serious” threat to public order. This will concern foreigners definitively convicted of certain crimes and offenses punishable by at least five years in prison.
This text “finds a fair balance between the protection of public freedoms, the protection of the rule of law and the concrete and massive strengthening of the security of the French”, assures Charles Rodwell, believing that he has found here a wording likely to pass the filter of the Constitutional Council, unlike a first parliamentary initiative voted on last year.
“On this text, we have favored efficiency over postures,” Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wrote on X after the vote, welcoming “demanding work between the government and parliament to achieve a concrete and operational response.”
“Communication coup”
“This law would not have saved” Philippine’s life, said, conversely, rebel Andy Kerbrat, stressing that her alleged murderer had been released “after 70 days, well before the current legal ceiling. Extending the detention period would have changed absolutely nothing.” The text also plans to extend to 210 days the maximum period of detention of foreigners convicted of terrorism.
More than 40,000 people were retained in CRAs in 2024, according to the associations involved. They denounce the living conditions there, and an ineffective extension of the detention period, with expulsions taking place especially in the first weeks.
The socialist Romain Eskenazi denounced “a communication stunt”, with a text which “mixes everything, mental health, immigration, terrorism and chooses the arbitrary”. According to him, the obstacle to expulsion is not the length of detention, but depends on the quality of diplomatic relations.
The text also involves the creation of a “psychiatric examination injunction” by the prefect, to force certain people to submit to it in order to prevent terrorist acts.
The bill finally provides for the creation of “terrorist security detention”, making it possible to place in a care center, after a prison sentence, people presenting a risk of recidivism and adhering to a terrorist “ideology”.
The far right, in support, estimated that “the country” “really needed” this text “after ten years of macronism” which caused the insecurity figures to “explode” and caused a “migratory submergence”. The RN deputy Michaël Taverne criticized the right and the center for wanting to “clear their conscience”, calling them “arsonist firefighters of the collapse of France”.
