Police clear a migrant camp located near the Paris City Hall. Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images/Luc Auffray
French police evicted about 100 people. migrants emerge from a makeshift tent camp outside Paris city hall on Tuesday ahead of the Olympic Games.
Police ordered migrants to pack up their tents in an early morning operation that sparked fresh accusations of “social cleansing.” and belongings.
Although a group of mostly teenage boys and young men from West Africa, many of them children awaiting documentation, were offered temporary housing in the city of Angers in the Loire region, only three boarded onto the bus.
Paris police said the operation was carried out for security reasons, in particular because the camp was close to schools.
But non-governmental organizations, including the campaign group Revers de la Médaille (The Other Side of the Coin), insist that authorities have launched a concerted campaign to expel the “fringe” from the camps and squats. The group says authorities want to clean up the city's image ahead of the July games and make way for athletes, volunteers and spectators.
“It's an endless cycle,” said Antoine de Klerk, a spokesman for the group.
“We call it nettoyage social, or social cleansing, because people are not being offered a solution,” he told the AP, arguing that people were being pushed aside to make room for a “beautiful Parisian postcard.”
About 100 people were evacuated after France's National Gendarmerie intervened at 6 a.m. local time. Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images/Luc Auffret 
A migrant walks past a tent during the evacuation of a camp on Place Saint-Gervais near Paris City Hall. Photo: ABDUL SABUR/REUTERS
Aid groups say sweeps are intensifying ahead of the Olympics, which run from July 26 to August 11, and that people are being sent far from the capital rather than being offered refuge in the Paris area. The groups say many asylum seekers have upcoming court hearings and meetings with officials regarding their requests for residency.
Lila Cherif of Secours Catholic said the charity has seen “an acceleration in evictions of informal accommodation located near Olympic venues or along the Olympic torch route.”
This phenomenon was largely limited to Paris and the Seine-Saint-Denis department, where the Olympic village is located, as well as “other host cities such as Lille and Bordeaux,” she added.
But Paris police told Le Monde: “The emergency accommodation situation is no worse than it was at the beginning of April 2023 and we have no particular concerns for July and August. We have never set out to achieve zero homelessness at the Games. And there is no desire to hide the suffering.”
Police look at one of the tents as they evict about 100 migrants from a makeshift camp in the center Paris. Photo: ABDUL SABUR/REUTERS
Laurent Nunez, Paris police chief, said the temporary encampment dismantled on Tuesday consisted of more than 80 tents blocking sidewalks and posing a security risk at a time of heightened alert for potential terrorist threats.
Earlier this month, police cleared France's largest squat in Vitry-sur-Seine, south of Paris, when about 450 people were evacuated.
Migrant camps are typically dismantled each spring in France at the end of an annual winter “truce” that limits evictions and cold weather evacuations. Paris city hall says the number of people living on the streets has risen to 3,500 – about 500 more than in the same period last year.
Some student dormitories have also been requisitioned for the Games. According to Le Monde, of the more than 1,400 students who were offered alternative housing over the summer, only 100 have found a place so far.
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