The swoop is the latest move in a widely criticised strategy to prepare the French capital for the upcoming Olympic Games.
ADVERTISEMENTFrench police evicted underage migrants from a makeshift camp on Tuesday morning in what aid groups are calling a campaign of “social cleansing.”
Before dawn on Tuesday morning around 30 teenage boys and young men from West Africa were awoken by police and told to pack up their tents and belongings.
Most were underage and in the process of seeking residency papers.
“I was already scared but I am even more scared because I don’t know where to go,” said a 16-year-old boy who fled from conflict in Burkina Faso and arrived in France two months ago.
Paris police said the operation was carried out for security reasons, notably because the camp was near schools.
The operation came days after police carried out a large scale eviction of France’s biggest squatter camp in a suburb of southern Paris.
“This is another example of the social cleansing that is happening in Paris before the Olympic Games,” said Elias Hufnagel, a volunteer with a group serving refugees and immigrants. “They don’t want the tourists to see Paris as a city full of migrants and asylum seekers”