CACHAN, France — For dozens of illegal immigrant families, a gymnasium outside Paris has become a temporary home. They sleep shoulder-to-shoulder, their dingy mattresses piled high with necessities and small treasures: cooking pans, diapers, stuffed animals.
The families, mostly Africans, were evicted from France’s largest squat on Aug. 17. Riot police stormed the building _ an abandoned dormitory at a prestigious university _ and forced out more than 500 people. Nearly 30 illegal immigrants were put in detention centers. About 200 went to the cramped, dank gymnasium.
The mass eviction has become a symbol of France’s tougher new immigration policy, stoking the debate about how far the government can go to send a sign that illegals are not welcome.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right’s likeliest contender in spring presidential elections, argues that France must select its immigrants more carefully, and he has vowed to send home at least 25,000 illegals this year, up from about 20,000 in 2005.
Authorities say the eviction was ordered largely out of fear of fires like those that swept through dilapidated housing in Paris last year. Those blazes killed about 50 people, mostly African immigrants.