Twelve Sri Lankan migrants among the 18 illegally who arrived in Mayotte at the end of May will be returned to the border, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Thursday. “This is a political message that we must convey (…) There is no Mayotte destination for irregular immigration organized by smugglers,” said the Minister of the Interior.
According to Christophe Castaner, speaking at a hearing of the Committee on Public Policy Assessment in the National Assembly, only one of these migrants has so far been withheld under the asylum application. “Twelve more will not be” and “will be returned to Sri Lanka,” the interior minister said. Contacted, the Prefecture of Mayotte states that the other Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been released and are awaiting a decision by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra).
On 27 May, 18 migrants from Sri Lanka were detained by security forces on a beach in the south of the island, a first for the 101st French department, which is already under heavy migratory pressure. With 48% of its population, Mayotte is experiencing high immigration from the neighbouring islands of Comoros, the nearest of which, Anjouan, is 70 km from its coast.
While the arrival of Sri Lankans in Mayotte is unprecedented, Reunion Island is regularly the destination of migrants from that country. Since March 2018, 273 people from Sri Lanka have arrived in this neighbouring department of the Indian Ocean.
