Police officers conduct a search after checking the identity papers and administrative status of a young foreign man at a bus station on March 19, 2025. NICOLAS GUYONNET / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
Sékou (all those mentioned by first name requested anonymity) thought he met every requirement. The 43-year-old Ivorian had lived in France for seven years, held a full-time permanent contract in cleaning, spoke French well and had an employer committed to supporting his administrative procedures. When he submitted his request to regularize his immigration status at the Paris Police Prefecture, he was optimistic about obtaining a residence permit. But in August, he received a deportation order.
It has been one year since Bruno Retailleau, France’s interior minister from September 2024 to October 2025, initiated a tougher stance on immigration, notably through a directive issued in January. The document, a sort of guidebook for prefects, made exceptional admission to residency conditional on seven years’ presence in France, certification of French language proficiency, with the absence of any threat to public order and no previous deportation orders. It repealed a directive from 2012 and its previously more open and specific criteria. “Regularization must remain an exceptional pathway,” the head of right wing Les Républicains party wrote in his memo. The prefects around France received the message loud and clear.
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