Paris Police Launch System to Verify Identities of Suspected Underage Maghreb Migrants

To fight this phenomenon, the Directorate of Proximity Security of the Paris metropolitan area (DSPAP) of the Paris police prefecture has been experimenting since 2019 with a new system, informs Europe 1. "We take the fingerprints of the suspects, put them in international format and send them to our security officers in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia who then pass them on to the local authorities for verification in their automated fingerprint database," explains Valérie Martineau, the director of the DSPAP. Previously, the police had no reliable means of establishing the identity and age of the suspects.

In total, 1,122 verification requests have been sent to the Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian authorities, with 256 responses confirming at 95% that the suspects are adults. "We get this feedback several weeks after the custody, but it’s not a problem," specifies Valérie Martineau, who adds that with this system, two to three judicial procedures are initiated per week. The system, first experimented with in Paris, has since been extended to the entire Paris police prefecture, Seine-Saint-Denis, Seine and Marne and Val-de-Marne.

Delinquency attributed to unaccompanied minors from the Maghreb increased by 20% between 2019 and 2020, according to the Paris police prefecture, which recalls that in the first quarter of 2021, 2,360 presumed unaccompanied minors of Maghreb origin were arrested. These are in fact outlaws who are trying to escape more severe sanctions. For most of the undocumented, they give nicknames to the police and present themselves as minors to avoid removal measures.