From France to Mali, a deportee's struggle far from home

Across Europe, deportations of non-EU citizens rose by a quarter in 2023, at 91,000, led by France and Germany, according to statistics agency Eurostat. Advocacy groups and lawyers say France's rules have put individuals at risk.

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In December, Moussa Sacko spent his birthday in Mali scrolling through messages from friends with whom he celebrated a year earlier on Paris' Champs-Elysees. He hasn't seen any of them since being deported from France in July. Like Sacko, hundreds of foreign nationals previously protected because they grew up in France now face expulsion under legislation introduced last year. Sacko was born in Mali but moved to France as a young child to treat a chronic eye condition. He spent most of his life in Montreuil, a Paris suburb. "I don't feel at home," Sacko said in Bamako, the capital of Mali, which has a rich culture and history but is t one of the poorest countries in the world. It is in the grips of insurgency. Military coups in 2020 and 2021 led to sanctions, tanking the economy.

He shares a room with a cousin, on an unpaved street near open sewers, and stands out from the way he dresses and speaks French. He says he often feels lonely: "I am on the outside, in a bubble between Europe and Africa." Reuters interviewed more than 40 people including five individuals affected by the new law, along with rights advocates, lawyers and researchers, for a detailed look at the impact of France's 2024 immigration reform. In total, Reuters reviewed 12 cases of people deported or facing deportation under the new rules, mostly for crimes for which they served sentences long ago, in what their lawyers called overzealous enforcement that upturned lives.

The lower bar has raised concerns, including in French court decisions, that the rules clash with the European Convention on Human Rights' Article 8 on the right to private and family life.