A total of 4,686 foreign criminals were deported from France in 2023, a 30% increase over 2022, the Interior Ministry said on Thursday, two weeks after a new immigration law was passed to make deportations easier, AFP reported.

Emmanuel Macron with his interior minister Gérald Darmanin (left)Photo: Thierry Breton / Imago Stock and Photo / Profimedia Images

In particular, according to the cited source, in 2023, 4,686 foreign criminal offenders were deported, compared to 3,615 in 2022 and 1,800 in 2021.

The Place Beauvau (Ministry of the Interior) announced the figures on the same day that the Chamber of Accounts published a report on its policy to combat illegal immigration.

The main destinations for deportees are the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and Central Europe.

According to Place Beauvau, these figures correspond to “effective deportations from administrative detention centers and the implementation of ministry deportation orders.”

This does not include people deported because they are listed on the Preventing Terrorist Radicalization Notification Register (PRNT).

Gérald Darmanen, who met prefects at the Ministry of the Interior on Thursday morning, “welcomed this first assessment” and asked them to “further speed up action in this area, especially with the contribution of the immigration law when it is published”. “, – a source from his entourage told AFP.

Controversial law to tighten rules for migrants

The law, which still needs to be approved by the Constitutional Council before it can be enacted, provides for the deportation of foreigners who have committed crimes, including those who are in the country legally, even those who arrived in France under the age of 13 or who have a French husband.

Last month, French lawmakers approved a controversial bill to tighten immigration rules, handing President Emmanuel Macron a political victory that exposed cracks in his centrist majority.

The bill, a compromise between Macron’s party and the conservative opposition, illustrates a rightward shift in politics across much of Europe as governments try to fend off the rise of the far-right by tightening immigration rules.

“Harsh measures are needed today,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanen said after the vote in the lower house of the French parliament. “You cannot solve the problems of the French in the rest of the country by pinching your nose in the center of Paris,” he added.