It was a long-awaited visit, after the police attack at La Guillotière last week.
This Saturday, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, went to Lyon to support the police and assure the population of state support.
But he also took the opportunity to criticize the City's policy, managed by the green mayor Grégory Doucet, in terms of security.
A second detention center
Gérald Darmanin first announced the opening of a second administrative detention center (CRA).
The latter will be open at the beginning of 2023, which will bring the number of places available in the agglomeration to 280, announced the minister in an interview granted Friday to the newspaper Le Progrès.
He went in the morning to the inauguration of a CRA of 140 places.
The second of which he announced the opening will be carried out in six months by the renovation of the old establishment, currently closed.
This decision "will make it possible to double the reception capacity of foreigners in detention", he underlined.
"We don't have enough places in the detention center and that's the purpose of my visit."
I inaugurate this morning the detention center (CRA) of Lyon, with a capacity of 140 places.
In 2023, with two CRAs in Lyon, we will double the detention capacity for irregular foreigners, primarily delinquents, to bring them to 280.
200 additional police officers will be assigned there.
pic.twitter.com/D0sVhpaJ5h
– Gerald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) July 30, 2022
The Minister specified that “200 new border police officers will be assigned to it”, “it will be a very important effort”.
A medal to the police attacked
During his visit, Gérald Darmanin also met the police officers attacked at the Guillotière, while they were trying to arrest a person suspected of theft, in the middle of a crowd who violently attacked them.
The Minister presented them with a medal and met with local residents.
After this incident, the minister had implicated a foreign suspect in an irregular situation, finally exonerated, but promised that he would be expelled anyway for other facts.
He announced on Tuesday the presentation "at the start of the school year in September" of a law to lift "all legislative reservations" preventing the expulsion of foreign offenders from the territory.
Gérald Darmanin also affirmed that "35% of acts of delinquency are committed in the Lyon metropolitan area by foreigners".
3,000 “delinquent foreigners” expelled in two years
Some 3,000 “delinquent foreigners” have been expelled from national territory in two years, he then declared in the afternoon.
"At the request of the President of the Republic," he said during a press briefing at the Rhône prefecture, without specifying the nationalities or the alleged facts.
"This is an unprecedented increase (...) and we must continue to do so," added the tenant of Place Beauvau.
And to evoke his wish to proceed to the start of the school year with “legislative changes” concerning expulsion procedures.
"From January, when a policeman arrests a foreigner in an irregular situation, he can put him in the CRA for three months to find a way to deport him to his country," he said.
Tackle Mayor Doucet
From a more political point of view, the Minister of the Interior did not hesitate to tackle the environmentalist mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet.
After having invited him to install more cameras in his city, Gérald Darmanin did not retain some criticism related to his absence this Saturday.
" The absent are always wrong.
It's hard for the police not to be supported by the mayor.
I think the mayor made a big mistake, but he can contact me.
I will come back to Lyon at the beginning of September and I invite him to be there,” he said.
The latter, who came to La Guillotière on Friday, made it known that he would not attend the ministerial trip: "It is not a minister that we need but more staff", he said. he tweeted on Friday asking for 300 more Net National Police.
Police reinforcements: a "two-year-old promise"?
Gérald Darmanin, who proposes to meet the mayor in September, insisted that "there have been more than 100 police officers" additional to Lyon "since I have been minister", a "new CRS on duty" as well as "200 police officers from the PAF” (border police) who will arrive in January 2023.
Reacting in a tweet to these "new promises", Grégory Doucet stressed that it was "imperative that, this time, his commitments (from the Minister) be followed up, in particular on the workforce".
The first deputy, Audrey Hénocque, also answered him at the end of the afternoon on BFMTV, considering that the staff promised by the Minister of the Interior was only a "two-year-old promise".
“We are in the blur and the lie”, she lambasted.
Regarding Gérald Darmanin's remarks on "foreigners", Audrey Hénocque denounced "an amalgamation between delinquency and immigration" and considered that the district of La Guillotière was "fed up with being stigmatized".