French-Born Civil Servant Denied Entry at Orly Airport, Discovers Loss of Citizenship

When leaving Algeria on July 21 for France, Abdel, a local government official, was a thousand leagues from imagining what awaited him at Orly airport (Val-de-Marne). During the passenger check, the PAF border police agents turned him away from French territory on the grounds that he has been the subject, since 2020, of an administrative file from the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture designating him as a foreigner, reports Le Parisien. This is something the 55-year-old man born in France in 1969 was unaware of. The misadventures of the quinquagenarian then begin. His 19-year-old son who made the trip with him left the airport with his mother, but Abdel was placed in detention at Orly for four days, far from his four children. Yet he is a man who has always voted in France and has never had a problem traveling abroad with his French passport.

His papers (biometric French passport) were confiscated. "They talk to me about this paper that my father would have signed, of which I had never heard, recounts the local government official. They make me understand that I was deprived of nationality after my birth. 55 years later, I was no longer French. It was lunar, completely crazy." It is a paper signed by his Algerian father in 1970. This sheet indicates that his late father had agreed to renounce French nationality for him and his children. A decree published after the Evian Accords of 1962, marking the end of the Algerian war, gives legal force to the document in question. But at the time, "a lot of Algerians were forced to sign," Abdel assures. His illiterate father may have signed this sheet under duress. Former French President François Mitterrand would have however abolished this decree, which has become obsolete today.

On July 25, Abdel leaves Orly for the Créteil (Val-de-Marne) courthouse. A judge of freedoms and detention (JLD) looks into his case. "She clearly saw that nothing was standing up," sighs the French civil servant. He is released. "It’s simple: a file comes out, we apply the rules with checks. And after 96 hours, it’s the judge who decides in a sovereign manner," develops an internal source of the Orly PAF. But the PAF lawyer does not let go. The case is pending before the Paris Court of Appeal. Abdel and his lawyer were absent from the hearing. "It was not in our interest to be there. In the event of an unfavorable decision, Abdel would have been arrested and put on a plane," claims Marcel Baldo. He says he has "never seen this in 38 years at the bar. It’s Kafkaesque."

Back home, Abdel is fighting to get his French passport back. He has initiated a possession of status procedure (establishment of a filiation link) at the Bobigny court. He has also filed a residence permit application. The Créteil court allowed him to have an 8-day visa, the time for him to regularize his situation. The quinquagenarian can count on the support of the mayor of Bobigny, whose brother-in-law he is. The latter sent a letter to the prefect of the 93 to support his requests. While the local government official has resumed his work on Monday, he is not about to forget this episode of his life. "I’m not going to stop there," he warns. "I want compensation. I was held for four days, it was very painful. I don’t want this to happen to other sons of Algerians."