"One more step towards the trivialization of racial profiling": several unions from the justice system denounce Retailleau's migrant hunt

The magistrates' and lawyers' unions are up in arms against Bruno Retailleau's hunt for migrants . The Magistrates' Union, the French Lawyers' Union, the Judicial Action Collective, the Immigrant Information and Support Group (Gisti), and other organizations have announced that they will file a summary judgment with the Council of State against Bruno Retailleau's instruction for the mass arrest of illegal immigrants.

Since Wednesday, June 18 , the Minister of the Interior has been organizing a massive operation in train stations, buses, and other public transport systems, which is scheduled to continue until Thursday evening. Nearly 4,000 police officers, customs officers, and sentinel forces have been deployed throughout the country.

These organizations, unions, and associations indicate that they have already repeatedly called for the abolition of these controls. This is hardly convincing Retailleau; everything is in a race to the bottom with the far right on the issue of immigration.

" This 'clean sweep' operation, which goes unnamed, constitutes a further step, and not an insignificant one, on the nauseating path of trivializing racial profiling, or even its deliberate institutionalization ," the organizations castigate in a joint press release.

The tenant of Place Beauvau now intends to launch a "National Operation to Control Border Flows," in other words, a raid on undocumented immigrants . On June 19, the Minister of the Interior once again visited the Gare du Nord in Paris to demonstrate his new gadget. The day before, he had already come to witness some of these checks, proudly claiming 47,000 arrests "since the beginning of the year." The system is more than visible in train stations where there are more police officers than passengers.

The organizations denounce checks based " on arbitrary and supposedly 'instinctive' criteria, foremost among which are racial and class stereotypes, dress, or the person's actual or supposed ethnic origin " in their joint statement. " Will law enforcement officers truly randomly choose the people to be checked in stations, trains, and buses? " they ask. Since yesterday, a wave of stress has gripped people in irregular situations.

Bruno Retailleau, inspired by Trump, puffs out his chest and hammers home: " The signal is to tell all candidates for this illegal immigration and therefore for fraud: do not come to France. We will not accept anything, it is zero tolerance."