Farm workers living in “slums”, employment of undocumented migrants: nearly 200 investigations for illegal work and human trafficking were opened in France after checks carried out in mid-September as part of a large European operation, said the gendarmerie on Tuesday.
These checks - 861 in total - were carried out from September 14 to 20 in several departments, including Bouches-du-Rhône, Marne, Haute-Garonne or overseas, said the gendarmerie.
They took place as part of a large European operation, the Joint Action Days (JAD), which mobilized 24 countries with the support of the European police agency Europol.
The gendarmes targeted in their checks "sectors of activity using a fragile workforce".
Of the 190 investigations opened, 174 procedures relate to "illegal work" and 16 to "serious exploitation through labor that may be criminalized as trafficking in human beings", added the gendarmerie.
450 people have been identified as victims.
Agricultural employees and truck drivers
Among them, employees of farms housed in "slums" and sometimes sleeping on the ground, in buildings without sanitary facilities or windows, detailed with Colonel Thuriès, commander of the Central Office for the fight against delinquency itinerant (OCLTI), in charge of the operation.
But also truck drivers driving without respecting the regulatory breaks, or foreigners employed "without a work permit or in an irregular situation".
Trafficking in human beings "is the third most profitable form of trafficking after drug trafficking and arms trafficking", recalled the gendarmerie.
"It would bring in 32 billion dollars a year worldwide."
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"Sexual exploitation is the most developed form of trafficking" in France, but "labor exploitation, little spotted because often unrecognized, due to the clandestinity of the phenomenon which operates in the professional or private sphere, is a reality ”, underlined the gendarmerie.