Is France sending migrants to villages to ‘clean up’ Paris before Olympics?

Serge Grouard, the mayor of Orleans in central France expressed resentment on Monday over the sudden influx of up to 500 homeless migrants in his town of 100,000 residents without his prior knowledge.
Addressing the media, he said “It has been proved that every three weeks, a coach arrives in Orleans from Paris, with between 35-50 people on board. There were rumours it was to “clean the deck” in the capital ahead of the Olympics in July and August.”

Upon arrival, each migrant is provided with three weeks of accommodation in a hotel at the state’s expense. However, after this period, they are left to fend for themselves, according to Grouard.

Paris has historically attracted asylum seekers and migrants, particularly from Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. The demand for short-term emergency accommodation in the city far exceeds the available supply. Consequently, makeshift camps often emerge under bridges or on unoccupied land, only to be periodically dismantled by law enforcement.

Occupants are offered the chance to apply for asylum and the government’s policy is to move many of them out of Paris and into facilities elsewhere in the country.

The arrivals in Orleans were “not linked to the organisation of the Paris Olympics”, the state’s regional security office said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that Orleans was one of 10 “temporary regional reception centres”.

“We haven’t been consulted, either about the creation or about the people who will go there,” the deputy mayor of Strasbourg, Floriane Varieras, told AFP when asked about a regional facility near her city in eastern France.