PARIS (AP) — The French government is scrambling to meet President Emmanuel Macron’s deadline to get migrants off France’s streets and out of forest hideouts by year’s end as it gets colder and colder.
That won’t likely happen, and Macron’s government is now tightening the screws: ramping up expulsions, raising pressure on economic migrants and allowing divisive ID checks in emergency shelters.
Critics contend that Macron’s increasingly tough policy on migrants — though wrapped in a cloak of goodwill — contradicts his image as a humanist who defeated an anti-immigrant populist for the presidency, and has crossed a line passed by no other president in the land that prides itself as the cradle of human rights.