'It's hell': Teen migrants in Paris risk homelessness if they can't prove they're under 18

Standing on a small Paris street armed with a thermos of tea, biscuits and a bag of mobile phones, SylvieBrugnonand QuentinGauthierstop several young men heading toward the French Red Cross offices a few metres away.

A pair of boys arrive, ill-dressed for the cold and shivering. They slept outside the night before.

Brugnon, 68, who is retired from working in the theatre, andGauthier, 33, a high school teacher, are volunteers with a local migrant support group.

They ask the boys from Mali andGuinea, respectively theirbirthdatesand for any identification documents they may have. It's all in preparation for the interview inside, where caseworkers will try to assess the boys'ages and determine whether they are eligible forsocial assistance. If the Red Cross case workers think they're over 18, they'll remain on the street.

One of the boys indicates his age with three flicks of his hand, followed by one finger: 16. Though he can't speak French, he tries.Gauthierwarns him against it, telling him firmly to demand a translator as soon as he gets inside.

"It's the moment when the city will decide if they are minors or not,"GauthiertellsCBC. "Some are lost and in a bad state, because they just slept in the street before the interview. They don't understand how important [the interview] is, and then, most of them are rejected."

Under French law, anyone under the age of 18 must have access to shelter and educationwhether they're born in France or abroad. InParis, the Red Cross assesses whether those arriving in the city on their own are minors.

Tent cities regularly dismantled

Seventeen-year old Abdoulaye (not his real name) has been deemed an adult by the agency, but he is appealing the decision. (CBCis using pseudonyms for some of the minors in this story to protect their identities while their cases are under review.)

An aspiring professional soccer player, Abdoulayeleft his native Mali, a West African country wracked by rebellion and extremist violence, and crossed the deserts of Burkina Faso and Niger before heading north to Morocco, where he boarded a boat to Spain. His 15-month journey ended when he took a bus to Paris.

Since his arrival a year ago, he has spent most of his nights in a tent outside."It's hell," he said. "We can't sleep anywhere, because of the police."

AsNGOsreport a rising number of migrants and refugees in the streets, police have been dismantling the makeshift camps popping up primarilyin poor and working-class neighbourhoodsin the north of the city.

In November, authorities took down thesprawling camp in the bustling, multicultural area of LaChappelle where Abdoulaye had a tent. His phone, clothes, shoes and copy of theQur'anwere all lost.

It was one of dozens of camp "evacuations" carriedout since 2015, according to human rights organizations, including Mdcins Sans Frontires(MSF).During such operations, Paris authorities have pledged to provide shelter to those displaced, but rights groups complain there are too few spaces for the numbers in need.

Shelter spaces areinvariably short-term, and after just two nights,Abdoulayewas on the street again.

He is among hundreds of young people from sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan and Syria who wander the streets of Paris because their applications for obtaining minor status were rejected.

'Completely bogus'

Many of the young migrants arrive without basic documents, such as birth certificates, which makes it difficult to prove their age. So, local authorities rely on interviews, whatever paperwork they can obtain from family overseas and, controversially, hand and wrist X-rays, which have been roundly criticized by scientists as an unreliable way of determining age.

The age-assessment system "is completely bogus," says Jean-FranoisMartini, a legal expert withGisti, a migrantrights organization.

"No professional in France should be able to say that after 10 minutes or even 10 hours of interview that he's sure he has before him a 16-and-a-half-year-old youngster or a 19-year-old. And yet, Paris's entire system rests on it!"

In its 2018 report,Like a Lottery,Human Rights Watch said the age evaluation system is "arbitrary" and "falls short of what is required by French law and violates international standards."

Neither theDpartementof Paris (a local administration that includes the City of Paris) nor the Red Cross would agree to an interview withCBC.

WATCH | Young migrants on the streets of Paris show off the dirty and cramped tent accommodationswhere they sleep:

'There is no solution for them'

5 years ago

Duration 3:36

Migrant aid worker Adle Poncet distributes supplies to young asylum seekers living in tent cities on the streets of Paris.

French municipalities have had to cope with rising numbers of new arrivalsand blame the federal government for not providing the resources to help them. The number of young migrants arriving in the country has at leastdoubled in the last few years, with more than 20,000 in care in 2018, according to the Ministry of Justice.

No figures exist for how many are deemed adults and thus ineligible for children's social assistance, but MSFestimatesthat number to be in the thousands.(Those over 18 can apply for asylum, but that process, too, has a high rejection rate.)

Taking a sample from thePantindistrict of Paris last year,MSF foundthat of the 431 young people who managed to appeal the Red Cross's decision on their age, more than 57 per cent had their rejection of minor status overturned.

'Impossible to understand'

It backed up findings from amulti-agency studythat revealed half of the applications rejected by the Red Cross were overturned by judges. Rights groups point to the high ratio as proof of the Red Cross's dubious methods.

"Interviews [with young migrants] are sometimes held without an interpreter and are often conducted hastily," said Corinne Torre, head ofMSF'smission in France.

The group also noted that in some cases, the Red Cross refused to assess age at all on the grounds that the young person appeared to be "clearly adult."

"Everything seems to be done to demonstrate the [adulthood] of young people, when they should be treated with the benefit of the doubt,"Torre said.

Alawyers group specializing in immigration affairsfound hundreds of young people could not even get an interview with a Red Cross case worker or access other means of finding shelter.

Hamid, a young Afghanwho has been sleeping rough in Paris, says he's"17 years and five months old."

He says when the Taliban killed his father, he fled Afghanistan, heading to Iran on foot. With the help of human traffickers,Hamidcontinued on through Turkey and Greece.

He has been living in a vast migrantcamp of mostly men for the past four months. Straddling the "priphrique" the highway that encircles Paris the camp of more than 150 tents and shacks is almost a kilometre long.Large rats and mice can be seen scurrying across muddy trails and under tents.

Warming his hands over a barrel fire,Hamidsays "it's impossible to understand" the Red Cross assessment systemor why he was turned away. "I tell them everything! And they say, 'Go see a judge.'"

ButHamiddoesn't know how to begin navigating a system in which he must fill out forms and file an appeal on his ownin a language he barely speaks.

Network of volunteers

SylvieBrugnonand QuentinGauthierare part of a small butactive network of volunteers using social media to find shelter for young migrants, help them navigate the French bureaucracy and organize classes in everything from basic French to math and science.

When all else fails, they sometimes let the youth into their own homes fora few nights or, in some cases, months.

One cold morning last January,Brugnonwas offering tea and advice to some young migrants when she saw a frail boy emerge from the Red Cross offices, muttering to himself.DabyFofana, whose French was weak at the time, had just been told that his explanation of how he arrived inFrance was not crediblebecause it lacked detail.

Back in Mali, he says, a neighbouring family had killed theFofanas' livestock, set fire to their crops and threatened the family. At his father's urging,Dabyleft with a friend from the village and trekked across Mali, Algeria and Morocco before crossing the Mediterranean.

According to the letter of refusal, the fact that he was able to do all this "showed a degree of maturity and autonomy that are at odds" with his stated age 16. The interview lasted 15 minutes.

"I'm not going to spend another night on the street,"Dabykept telling himself as he approached the front gates, oblivious toBrugnoncalling out to him.

She ended up offering him a place to sleep in her fourth-floor flat in central Paris. That night,Dabydidn't move, not even to go to the washroom, out of fear that he wouldwakeBrugnonand not be invited back.

Jean-FranoisMartini of Gistisays the problem is not budget or spacebut how the public views asylum seekers.

"A large number of elected representatives and, I am afraid, a segment of the French population, consider that, young or not, [the migrants] are above all foreigners, and the concern of the government is to reassure the people and tell them, 'We'll control the migration flows.'"

Indeed, aNovember 2018 poll by French market research firm Ifopreported that seven out of 10 French people said the countrycan't afford to take in any more migrants.

"Institutions are increasingly hostile [to migrants], and there's a kind of trivialization of having children in the street, denied an education," Martini said.

"Faced with the deficiencies of the state and the departments, there is a kind of alternative system of protection being set up, alongside the official one."

Clothes for the needy

On a damp night in the north end of Paris, about 40 people mainly from West Africa and Afghanistan are gathered at a street corner, waiting to speak to volunteers from the migrant aid association Utopia 56.

A half-dozen teenage boys are gathered around volunteerLopoldHanczy, who takes note of what they need: socks, trousers, hats.

"Is that all?" he asks.

The boys are reluctant to ask for more. "A coat, as well," one of them ventures. None of them hasoneas winter sets in.

Hanczyand his colleague LeethaSmall head back to the warehouse, hoping there are enough clothes to meet demand. As they emerge, a dozen teenage boys are waiting outside, boisterous as they call dibs onslim-fit jeans and trendy toques.

Among them isSekou, a tall, lanky 16-year-old from rural Mali who rarely stops smiling. He, too, has moved from camp to camp, and his face is starting to bear the scars of months of sleeping rough.

Like the others, his daily routine revolvesaround distribution points and facilities' opening hours. After a shower in the free public baths,Sekouand his friends walk a half-hour south to Stalingrad Quarter to line up for breakfast.

On Thursdays and Fridays, some of them attend French class at a nearby library. Otherwise, they kill the time as best they can, walking the streets, trying to stay warm and dry and searching for somewhere to hang out where they won't bekicked out.

A kind of purgatory

In December, after a nine-month wait, news ofDaby'sappeal finally arrived.

Brugnonwasover the moon. "I read it one time, two times, three times, and realized he was accepted as a minor!"

"I'm so happy," said Daby. "But you can see that I'm 16 years old! What they were saying was that I was lying. And yet they rely on bone X-rays which showed that my friend's teeth were 21 years old, [but] his hand was only 16!"

Now,Dabyis looked after by social servicesandstarts high schoolin Paris this coming week.

Meanwhile,Abdoulayeremains homeless as he awaits news of his appeal. He has begun to spend nights in a hotel booked for him by the local authoritiesbut must vacate his room during the day.

He has no money, and in his efforts to dodge the cold,Abdoulayewas caught in the subway without a ticket and kicked out.

On Thursdays and Fridays, he studies French for a few hours in the library.And he's playing soccer with a local club, a step toward fulfilling his dream of one day playing professionally with a European team.

As for the many others still on the street, the shacks and makeshift camps remain a kind of purgatory between the home they've left and the one they are unable to settle in.