Barely arrived, already leaving.
The 198 African refugees who landed Monday evening at the Château de Thiverval-Grignon from Mayotte are starting to pack up.
From this Friday, half of them will be transferred to accommodation centers in the provinces.
Initially, it was planned that 110 of the 198 refugees would leave Thiverval-Grignon before this weekend.
But the figure should be revised downwards due to logistical difficulties at the new reception sites.
The schedule remains unchanged for the future: a second wave is planned in a week with around fifty additional departures.
By March 10, there should only be around thirty people left at the Thiverval estate.
The arrival of these African “migrants” last Monday from Mayotte had sparked lively debates in recent days.
Figures from the National Rally like Jordan Bardella and the Reconquest party like Marion Maréchal had denounced the arrival of almost 200 refugees in this state-owned area.
A majority of families and single women
Among these two hundred people, there are a majority of families as well as single women.
Originally from the Great Lakes region in Central Africa, they had reached the island in the Indian Ocean to escape the violence in their country of origin.
They were housed in precarious conditions in a stadium near Mamoudzou, the largest city in Mayotte.
But the growing resentment of the local population towards immigrant populations convinced state services to accelerate their repatriation to mainland France.
Furthermore, none of them is in an irregular situation: registered as political refugees, they all benefited from the right to asylum in France.
A handful of asylum seekers installed in the same stadium were not granted asylum and were deported to their country of origin.