From France to Mali, a deportee’s struggle far from home

In December, Moussa Sacko spent his birthday in Mali scrolling through messages from friends with whom he celebrated a year earlier on Paris’ Champs-Elysees. He hasn’t seen any of them since being deported from France in July. Like Sacko, hundreds of foreign nationals previously protected because they grew up in France now face expulsion under legislation introduced last year. Sacko was born in Mali but moved to France as a young child to treat a chronic eye condition. He spent most of his life in Montreuil, a Paris suburb. “I don’t feel at home,” Sacko said in Bamako, the capital of Mali, which has a rich culture and history but is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is in the grips of insurgency. Military coups in 2020 and 2021 led to sanctions, tanking the economy.

He shares a room with a cousin, on an unpaved street near open sewers, and stands out from the way he dresses and speaks French. He says he often feels lonely: “I am on the outside, in a bubble between Europe and Africa.” Reuters interviewed more than 40 people including five individuals affected by the new law, along with rights advocates, lawyers and researchers, for a detailed look at the impact of France’s 2024 immigration reform. In total, Reuters reviewed 12 cases of people deported or facing deportation under the new rules, mostly for crimes for which they served sentences long ago, in what their lawyers called overzealous enforcement that upturned lives.

The lower bar has raised concerns, including in French court decisions, that the rules clash with the European Convention on Human Rights’ Article 8 on the right to private and family life.

The French Interior Ministry did not reply to requests for comment. After presenting the bill to parliament, then Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said it was about “what type of immigration we wish to have,” including making it easier to deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. Polls show public support for the law.

France’s Constitutional Council rejected elements of the legislation last year, including migration quotas, but the new deportation rules remained, removing previous protections for foreign nationals who settled in France before the age of 13 and those with French children, a French spouse, or a serious medical condition. The cases reviewed by Reuters involved people deported or threatened with deportation to countries including Mali, Algeria, Morocco and Ivory Coast. Eight settled in France before they were 13. Three have French children, and one has a French spouse.

In two of the cases, judges overturned the deportation orders citing Article 8. In one of those cases, the deportation order was struck down after the man had already been expelled. The government said all the individuals were a threat to public order, an elastic legal category twelve lawyers told Reuters was previously reserved for hardened criminals but was now invoked more regularly. “Before, this threat would be terrorism or serious banditry and little by little it has become petty crime,” said immigration lawyer Morgane Belotti. In four of the cases, authorities issued deportation orders without prior warning when the individuals turned up for immigration appointments, without being accused of new infractions, a practice that makes once-routine visits fraught. “Fewer people are going to risk asking for a residency permit due to fears that it could end in a deportation procedure,” said Melanie Louis, of French rights group La Cimade. The group says deporting someone because of crimes they already received punishment for is a “double sentence.”

Deportations rose 27% in 2024 to 22,000, government data shows.

La Cimade tracked 341 deportation orders issued last year as a result of the law. The ministry said it did not have data on the law’s impact on people who settled in France as children. The group said it supported 191 individuals last year at the Mesnil-Amelot detention centre, near Charles de Gaulle airport, who would have previously been protected. Of those, 35 were deported, and 24 released due to courts overturning deportation orders, it said.

European governments have expressed frustration with courts using Article 8 to block deportations. Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in March announced a review of immigration courts’ use of the article. Gerrie Lodder, migration law professor at the Open University of the Netherlands, described a trend to dilute Article 8 provisions, with people settled as long as 50 years being deported.

The European Union is looking at establishing common rules to expedite deportations, including sending rejected asylum seekers to third countries.

“The aim is to make the process of returns simpler,” while respecting fundamental rights, a European Commission spokesperson said.

Across Europe, deportations of non-EU citizens rose by a quarter in 2023, at 91,000, led by France and Germany, according to statistics agency Eurostat. Advocacy groups and lawyers say France’s rules have put individuals at risk in unsafe or unstable countries, separated from family and without adequate healthcare.

Sacko’s eye condition, nystagmus, causes rapid pupil movements. He saved enough with crowdfunded donations from French friends to buy a motorbike and a small kiosk to sell basic household goods. Sacko said riding the bike lifts his spirits. He has no funds yet to stock the kiosk, he said. “It is very complicated to make a living,” he said, his eyes jittery. Activist Alassane Dicko, deported to Mali in 2006, helps other returnees. He said some were too ashamed to contact their Malian family for help. Homelessness and mental health issues such as depression were not uncommon, he said.

In November, a court overturned the deportation order against Algerian national Hocine, 34, citing Article 8. But Hocine, who asked to only use his first name, had been deported to Algeria three months earlier. He is still there. The order cited past offences. Hocine served around six years during spells in prison prior to 2020 for crimes including drug dealing and handling stolen goods. He says he did “stupid things” as a youth but had changed. Hocine worked as a cleaner and lived with his partner in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, where he settled with family when he was 3 years old. He and his partner were trying to have a baby, medical records show.

On August 1, Hocine attended what he thought was a routine appointment to renew residency papers. Instead he was handed a deportation order. Three weeks later police arrested him at his home. On September 4, he was flown to Algiers. “I’m on the flight I can’t call my love I love you very much,” he texted his partner from the runway. Reuters established Hocine’s story through case documents and interviews with him and court officials. Hocine’s partner showed Reuters phone messages.

Despite the November decision, which approved a family residency permit, the French consulate in Algiers refused him a visa. Hocine is now living with relatives, unable to speak Arabic, and waiting for the court to notify the consulate of a subsequent ruling in his favour.