France rounds up Tunisian migrants

It’s just a plastic card, but for a penniless Tunisian it’s gold: a six-month EU residency permit many hope will give them a new start in France. But it may not be enough to ward off police.

“In France, even with the papers, I am afraid,” Moez, a lanky 39-year-old from southern Tunisia, said in Paris this week, showing his own temporary residency card issued by Italian authorities.

In the wake of Tunisia’s revolution, Moez sailed like tens of thousands of others to the Italian island of Lampedusa and made his way illegally into France, crossing on foot because he could not afford to pay a trafficker.

French police returned him to Italy, which promptly granted him the permit on humanitarian grounds, legally entitling him to stay in the EU under the bloc’s open-borders treaty.But France has vowed to deport migrants who cannot support themselves and has started rounding up Tunisians from its streets.

Activists say those arrested include migrants with legal Italian permits.

On Tuesday, France and Italy, which had quarrelled over the handling of the migrants, suggested allowing EU states to re-impose internal frontier controls temporarily in case of a major influx of migrants.

Police said they carried out the latest round of arrests on Wednesday night, detaining immigrants who were sleeping rough in parks in Paris and Marseille and drawing condemnation from rights groups.

Police said 60 more immigrants, mostly Tunisians with some Egyptians and Libyans, were arrested earlier on Tuesday in and around Paris, for “breaking residency laws”.

In Marseille, about 15 immigrants were arrested as non-govermental organisations intervened to try to house them, Bernard Eynaud of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said.Paris-based Tunisian civil group FTCR said police swooped on immigrants at a site in Paris where the Red Cross was serving free meals.

Many French-speaking Tunisians hope to reach France, which has close ties to its former colony, and turned its back on its dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali only after he was ousted in January.