Aid groups raised serious concerns Thursday over the plight of unaccompanied children left without shelter overnight at a migrant camp in Calais that French authorities have declared closed.
Officials have processed and found shelter for about 6,000 migrants, Calais authorities told CNN Thursday. They had vowed to resettle all of the migrants from the camp, known as “The Jungle,” before nightfall so that bulldozers could raze the settlement.
But about 1,200 migrant children remained at the site, where fires blazed Wednesday, as they awaited processing.
“This really is the end of the Jungle … Our mission is accomplished and it is now time for the migrants to start a new chapter as they begin a new life,” Calais prefect Fabienne Buccio said Wednesday.
She had earlier vowed that the camp would shut down that night “no matter what.”
But aid groups say many children were left with nowhere to go overnight.
Muhammad, a 16-year-old Egyptian migrant, told CNN he had slept rough because he wasn’t registered by the authorities, a process that would have allowed him to sleep inside shipping containers at the site.
He said he had slept on the ground just in front of the containers, with some 20 to 30 other minors.
‘Endangering their lives’
Gloria Micallef, of the NGO Care4Calais, told CNN Thursday morning that some children had stayed in some of The Jungle’s remaining structures overnight but others had slept on a pile of rubbish, too scared of the fires to sleep in a confined space.
They ranged in age from 13 to 17 years, she said.
“These children have escaped from terrible situations and they’ve come to Europe with the hopes of having a better life, and yet we are endangering their lives once again,” she said.
French immigration officials have been carrying out the registration process but aid workers have criticized a lack of organization.
Micallef said that at 1 p.m. Wednesday police had turned children away back into The Jungle, saying there was no more space.
“We were hoping that this morning we could get the children registered but apparently there is no registration for children right now,” Micallef said. “We’re told to leave the children in front of the containers.”
Asked Thursday about reports that migrants, in particular young people, were still sleeping rough in The Jungle, the Calais prefecture’s office said these were migrants who had only arrived in the area Wednesday and so were not included in the original resettlement plan.
As for claims of unaccompanied minors still seeking shelter in the Jungle, the prefecture’s office told CNN that these young people had refused to get on a bus to a nearby shelter.
“Right now we are cleaning up the camp and by Monday The Jungle of Calais will no longer exist. We have fulfilled our mission. The operation is finished,” the prefecture’s office said.
Custody threat
Inca Sorrell, of the NGO Help Refugees, told CNN that authorities had said children who were not registered by 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m.) Thursday would face arrest — but that there had been no information from the officials in charge of the registration process.
“There’s no one here to register these children, so we have no idea — it’s just waiting and making sure they are okay.”
The Calais prefecture told CNN that no one had been arrested as of Thursday lunchtime but that if a migrant at the camp refused to leave, the border police would intervene, ask for the person’s papers and place them in “administrative custody.” Those whose papers are not in order risk being sent home.
“What is going to happen for those who do not want to leave is that we will give them two solutions: either they join a shelter, or else they will have to leave Calais and be faced with the French law,” the prefecture said.
Diggers clear site
The minors are being interviewed by French and British authorities to determine if they should be rehomed in the UK, under an agreement offering refuge to children and vulnerable young people.
Dorothy Sang, a Save the Children representative at the Calais camp, said it was still not clear Thursday afternoon what those unaccompanied children who had not been registered were supposed to do.
Diggers are moving in, Sang said earlier on Twitter, with nowhere safe for the children to take shelter.
A CNN team at The Jungle on Thursday morning also said serious demolition was underway, with three diggers visible alongside a dozen men in hard hats and orange jumpsuits.
However, police had secured the perimeter of the site, preventing the team from getting access to see who remained there.
Family ties
Migrants have long refused to leave the camp, which sits some 30 miles across the English Channel from Britain, one of the more desirable destinations for refugees in the region.
The UK government has committed to take unaccompanied children from The Jungle who have family ties in Britain, as well as considering the cases of other unaccompanied minors without family connections.
French officials said up to 7,000 people were living at the camp on Monday before evacuations began. However, NGOs told CNN the figure was closer to 10,000.
In a statement Wednesday, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 5,596 migrants in total had been taken elsewhere since the operation to dismantle the camp began, including 234 unaccompanied children sent to the United Kingdom.
On Wednesday, he said, 1,215 adults had left the camp on board 32 buses, bound for centers across 11 regions, while 133 children had been directed to provisional shelters.
