Guantanamo-Sur-Mer?

If a news story in yesterday's Independent is to be believed, it now appears that the new detention centre 'planned' for Calais and currently under discussion by the French & UK governments, will be sited within the UK 'control zone' within the port area. This proposal attempts to exploit the ambiguous legal status of the 'control zone', allowing the UK & French authorities to bypass both their own and the EU's legal strictures that currently prevent them from expelling detained migrants as easily as they would wish.[1]

In February 2004 Home Office immigration controls moved to the so-called 'juxtaposed control zones' within the Calais, Boulogne and Dunkerque dock areas established under the 2003 Le Touquet treaty. Since then immigration officers have operated on 'French soil' and are allowed, under the reciprocal provisions of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum [NIA] Act 2002 (Juxtaposed Controls) Order 2003, to search ships and vehicles and detain 'illegal' immigrants.

When the Home Office was reorganised and the UK Border Agency created, a second version of the legislation was passed, the NIA Act 2002 (Juxtaposed Controls) Order 2006, which "authorise persons other than immigration officers to search a ship, aircraft or vehicle or other thing for the purpose of satisfying himself whether there are individuals whom an immigration officer might wish to examine for the purposes of considering whether the person should enter the UK."[2]

Now this may create a little bit of Blighty in France but UK control ends at the fence around the port.[3] And there is still the small problem of where the deportaion flights for the detainees, from what would potentially be the UK's very own Guantanamo, would fly from. Calais Marck Airport is far too small to take international flights and that means that the deportees would either have to be transported by boat to England, for a flight from there, or they would have to travel via French soil to a French Airport, which would cause legal problems for the French and defeat the whole object of the exercise. Of course they could always put them on a slow boat to Aghanistan or Iraq!

Another interesting recent development have been the reports from migrant support workers in Calais of what appear to be either UK police or UKBA officers on patrol with the French Border Police. If true, this is significant in that it indicates that the UK influence on French soil seems to be expanding even further and beyond the legal limits of the Calais port fence.


[1] France had already fallen foul of the European Declaration on Human Rights when they tried to hold a mass deportation back to Afghanistan last November, and most migrants detained in the North West of France have no papers and their countries of origin cannot accurately be ascertained.
[2] This Act also enables these "persons other than immigration officer", the UKBA's equivalent of Police Community Support Officers, to detain people up to a maximum of three hours in order to escort them to an immigration officer. It also provides for the taking and retention of fingerprints under Sections 141 and 143 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.
[3] Not strictly true as the UKBA operate visa controls at Paris, Brussels, Lille and Calais Frethun rail stations, as well as on Eurostar trains.