The castle of Thiverval-Grignon, in Yvelines, will welcome 308 African refugees from this week, we learned from the prefecture of Mayotte this Monday.
More than 300 migrants, the majority from Africa's Great Lakes, were evacuated from Mayotte.
These 308 occupants of the Cavani camp who had obtained asylum took off during the day for France, specifying that 14 others who had been rejected were sent back to their country of origin on Friday.
They will be housed at least until mid-March in Thiverval-Grignon in an area owned by the State.
The refugees will be welcomed
“in the student residences”
, the area having housed the AgroParisTech school until 2022, Nadine Gohard, the mayor without a label of Thiverval-Grignon, told AFP.
These refugees, mainly single women and families, come mostly from East Africa.
They had fled their country to try their luck on Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean where almost half of the population is made up of illegal foreigners.
Passengers on the plane will be supervised by Red Cross volunteers during their transfer, before being taken care of by Emmaüs social workers.
The installation of migrants in the grounds of the Cavani stadium, in Mamoudzou, was the starting point of blockages and roadblocks still partly paralyzing the Mayotte archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.
The dismantling of the camp, announced in mid-January by Gérald Darmanin, began at the end of January in several waves and resumed on a larger scale last weekend.
200 homeless people welcomed in winter 2022
The Château de Grignon, a 17th century building listed as a historic monument, was the historic site of the prestigious AgroParisTech agricultural engineering school until 2014. Now owned by the State, the disused castle has been transformed into place of emergency reception and accommodation for people on the street or without a fixed abode.
Managed by the Emmaüs association, the center welcomed 200 homeless people in winter 2022 for several months.
Their presence had provoked the ire of the Reconquest! party, which had organized a demonstration on February 11, 2023 to denounce the reception of migrants there.
The uncertain future of the site, which includes the castle listed as a historic monument, 130 hectares of agricultural land, including an experimental farm, and more than 133 hectares of woods, is a real soap opera.
In 2016, Thiverval-Grignon was planned to host the new training center for the Paris Saint Germain football club, a 35 million euro project which had already been abandoned in the face of outcry.
The state had also planned to sell it to a real estate developer in March 2020, before abandoning the project.
In June 2022, the government also auctioned furniture from the castle.
The prices of the furniture, deemed
“much lower than their real value”
, had also caused the opening of an investigation by the Court of Auditors in February 2023.