Razing of Calais ‘Jungle’ Camp Relocates Migrant Crisis

PARIS – The evacuation of the “Jungle” migrant camp is complete, but the crisis that spawned it is far from over.


French officials trumpeted what they said was a successful operation as the last migrants were cleared out on Thursday, allowing wrecking crews to roll into the notorious tent city on the French side of the English Channel.


The demolition marks the beginning of a much tougher slog: persuading thousands of migrants to abandon hope of reaching the U.K. and instead to put down roots in France.


For Europe’s political establishment, the Jungle was a squalid sign of how the Continent has failed to control the flow of migrants across its borders. To the migrants, the area remains a symbolic doorstep, tantalizingly close to Britain and its economic opportunities.


French officials said they had relocated nearly the entire population of the camp, which they put at 6,000. Aid workers and police said there were closer to 10,000 residents, and that thousands fled before or during the evacuation.


“The problem hasn’t been solved. No one buys it,” said François Guennoc, vice president for L’Auberge des Migrants, a local association that has been working in Calais for about eight years.


In all, authorities relocated about half of the migrants who had been living in the Jungle before the evacuation began on Monday. About 230 minors were transferred to the U.K. between Monday and Wednesday, the French Interior Ministry said. Hundreds more were being screened in Calais to determine whether they should be sent to the U.K. or to French shelters.


“They said they will take me to England, but I don’t know when,” said Berihu Gidey, a 14-year-old Eritrean boy who had been living in the camp for one month without any relatives.


On Thursday, the last buses bound for shelters across France crawled out of Calais. Work crews dismantled tarpaulin shacks, picking their way across a landscape intermittently scorched by migrants who had set their tents ablaze on Wednesday to protest the evacuation.


Migrants who took the buses face the uphill battle of learning how to live in a country where public opposition to immigration is running high. Most of the migrants don’t speak French, and they will be living in towns that began protesting their planned arrivals weeks ago. One migrant shelter in one town near Paris, which isn’t slated to receive anyone from Calais, was flooded and set on fire. The public opposition has convinced many migrants their best option is to steer clear of France’s asylum offer and head elsewhere.


“I was on the road in my country, and I’ll be on the road again,” said Adam Togo, a 26-year-old from the Darfur region of Sudan who had been living in the Jungle for six months. Speaking from the camp, he said he didn’t plan to take a bus: “I have a dream and it’s to go to the U.K.”


French authorities will now enforce laws that bar migrants from camping in the Jungle, said Fabienne Buccio, an official overseeing the evacuation. Dozens of migrants from other camps had recently arrived and were milling about the area. There were no more buses to take them away, she said, adding: “The operation wasn’t designed to take care of all migrants in France.”