Algerian Immigrant Fights Deportation: 20-Year Resident Challenges Paris Prefecture’s Permit Denial

An Algerian national who arrived in France in 2003 finds himself in a complicated situation. While he filed his residence permit renewal application on July 28, 2024, three months before the expiration of his residence card, he was met with a refusal from the Paris police prefecture. The prefecture is withdrawing his residence permit and issuing him a provisional residence authorization valid for six months, allowing him to work. In a decision issued on April 14, 2025, the prefecture cites the reasons: the applicant was convicted of two criminal offenses in 2019 and 2021. He received a suspended sentence of eight months’ imprisonment for "removal of children from the custody of the person in charge of them and retention outside France" and four months’ imprisonment with a suspended sentence for violence resulting in incapacity exceeding eight days against a person who has been or is a spouse.

Dissatisfied, the Algerian national is taking the matter to the administrative court. He is asking the judge in summary proceedings to annul the decision of the Paris police prefecture and to order the prefect to re-examine his situation and issue him a ten-year residence certificate. This is "an unprecedented phenomenon of withdrawals of ten-year residence certificates," says Fayçal Megherebi, his lawyer. According to him, the decision of the police prefect "disregards Article 7 bis of the Franco-Algerian agreement of December 27, 1968, as amended." He believes that his client "should have been granted a renewal by right."

On July 3, the judge in summary proceedings decided to suspend the decision of the Paris prefect and to order him to re-examine the situation of the Algerian national - father of three adult children, two of whom are French nationals - and to issue him within eight days of notification of the present decision, a provisional residence permit allowing him to work. In its decision, the administrative court emphasized that the criminal offenses "were committed in 2016 and that the Algerian national has not been unfavorably known to the police services since then."