Marseille's drug lords have a problem. Last year 32 of their foot soldiers were shot dead in the crime-plagued French Mediterranean port city.
Thirteen more have died in gang shootings so far this year, with three killed and eight wounded in one night alone this week. With so much bloodshed, dealers cannot find enough locals willing to risk their lives selling drugs on the streets.
So they are luring often vulnerable teenagers from the rest of France, who are easily sacrificed, to fill the gap.
Many of the young recruits "find themselves reduced to a state of semi-slavery, held hostage and even tortured," the city's chief judge, Olivier Leurent, told AFP.
The mounting death toll in Marseille echoes similar explosions of extreme violence in Antwerp and Rotterdam, the ports through which most of Europe's cocaine is smuggled by gangs linked to the Mexican cartels.
By "outsourcing" street dealing to young, expendable outsiders known as "jobbeurs", Marseille's drug lords make sure "they won't know enough about the network to pass on information" if they are arrested, said Tiphanie Binctin, of the French police's anti-drug unit OFAST.
It all starts with ads on social media like Snapchat. "We need a lookout. Young, with a good memory for faces, respectful of customers. Helpful to be good on motorbikes. 10 am to 10 pm."
Having failed his exams, Zacharie* couldn't resist the lure of "easy money" and travelled south from the Paris region to be a lookout at one of Marseille's 130 known drug-dealing spots. "They pay most here," he told a judge.
- Tale of two cities -
Like him, most of the young "jobbeurs" arrive at Marseille's Saint Charles train station, with its staggering views towards the blue of the Mediterranean.
But they do not get a chance to take in the old town, or the wealthy seaside suburbs that lead to the spectacular azur coves of the Calanques. Instead, they are taken directly to the notorious north of the city, to some of Europe's poorest and most crime-infested estates.
Their names may be redolent of bucolic old Provence -- La Marine Bleue, Les Oliviers (the Olive Trees) -- but gangs have such a hold here they even have checkpoints filtering traffic in and out of the estates.
Marseille's judges say four out of 10 minors they now see in drug cases come from outside the city.
And it is teenagers -- some as young as 14 -- who are on the front line of the city's vicious drugs war.
A 17-year-old was beaten and stabbed to death on the Paternelle estate in February by a mob of 30, the gruesome murder filmed by the killers before being posted on social media.
This week a 16-year-old was gunned down there, and a 14-year-old badly wounded by fire from an assault rifle.
- 'The French Connection' -
The stakes are high. Some of the city's dealing spots turn over 80,000 euros a day, with police scattering 12 customers queuing up to buy drugs during one recent swoop.
The roots of the drugs trade in France's second city are long and deep, and the gangs that control it are highly sophisticated.
Marseille's Corsican drugs mafia controlled most of the heroin that was smuggled into the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s, when "The French Connection" -- which gave its name to the Hollywood film -- was finally dismantled.
But the criminal underworld, which has since switched to cocaine and cannabis, continues to have a strong hold in France's poorest city.
Despite the spiralling risks, there seems to be no shortage of young recruits willing to work for the gangs.
"It's better than being a street walker," Cindy*, 21, told police after she was arrested.
"I had to work to get my daughter back."
The dealers put her up in a hotel when she arrived in Marseille from her village in the Herault.
Others have not been so lucky, according to the police, forced to sleep on balconies, in basements or next to bins.
"It's pure exploitation," said children's judge Laurence Bellon, with teens having to work long hours and take huge risks.
Even so, some youths making "1,400 euros a week for working seven days in a row... think they have made it and are earning a fortune," said Marseille's prosecutor Dominique Laurens.
- Torture -
But the reality is very different.
The young outsiders are more vulnerable and "less well paid and well treated than locals", said lawyer Valentin Loret, who has represented some of them. And when police catch them with drugs and cash they fall in the debt trap, with "the gangs demanding they pay them back".
Migrants from Algeria and Nigeria have also been recruited, thinking they were being hired to work on building sites, he added.
Marseille "is no Eldorado", said Frederique Camilleri, the region's top law enforcement official. "It's violence, fake debts, torture and acts of barbarity. It is being at the mercy of the gangs."
Their control is total, with teenagers punished for not counting the cash quickly enough or for failing to raise the alert fast enough when the police appear.
A 16-year-old who had run away to Marseille from a children's home in Chartres in central France was found unconscious after being tortured with a burning torch for selling a small amount of pot without permission.
One of his torturers, also then underage, was jailed for 10 years in November.
Another minor was recently put on a train back to his home by the authorities only to be intercepted at the next station by dealers because he had a "debt" to repay.
Many of the cases verge on human trafficking, said Judge Bellon.
One group of teenagers recruited online were locked up, beaten and tortured for no apparent reason after their arrival in the city during the pandemic in 2020.
One of the boys, who was 15 at the time, was raped by a young dealer and blackmailed with a sex tape to keep him quiet -- a tactic the gangs often use, according to a judicial source.
- 'Paupers in designer labels' -
Yet some vulnerable young people are still willing to put their lives at risk for a few hundred euros.
With many having dropped out of school at 11, said Judge Bellon, they cling onto the "designer clothes (they buy from dealing) as only part of their identity they can put forward.
"They are paupers in designer labels," said one of their lawyers, shocked by a client oblivious to the risks he was taking as he strutted around in a coat worth several hundred euros.
The conspicuous consumption of social media influencers and series like "Narcos" that glamorise the drug world seem to justify their lives, the authorities argue.
While police struggle to reach out to the teens, or work their way up the chain of command, some end up running to them when things get desperate.
In December, a young man who feared he was about to be kidnapped jumped onto a bus and begged passengers to help him. A month later another climbed onto the roof of a tower block and pleaded with the emergency services to rescue him, a police source said.
- 'Mexicanisation' -
Prosecutor Laurens said she feared "a worsening of the situation, with a shift to what some South American countries are experiencing -- a Mexicanisation" -- even if the number of deaths is not comparable.
Judge Bellon is equally worried. "It is more than lawlessness," she told AFP.
"It sometimes reminds me of an image we have of Brazil, where there is a complete divide between wealthy neighbourhoods and those where there is extreme poverty and hyper violence."
Despite the spiralling violence, some young "jobbeurs" like Zacharie -- arrested only three days after he arrived in Marseille -- have managed to free themselves from the clutches of the gangs.
He was spared jail, thanks to the intervention of his mother, but was banned from the city for his own good for three years.
As the prosecutor wryly put it, "the local climate didn't suit him".
* The names of the young people have been changed to protect them from reprisals.
Border appears calm after lifting of pandemic asylum restrictions
"Revelations Show Trump Immigration Policy Was Supposed To Be Harsher [...]Title 42: Trump-era border policy creates headache for Biden"
By VALERIE GONZALEZ, ELLIOT SPAGAT and GIOVANNA DELL'ORTO May 13, 2023
1 of 20 Women hold their wristbands high in the hope they are chosen by U.S. Border Patrol agents to be taken to processing after waiting for days between two border walls to apply for asylum Friday, May 12, 2023, in San Diego. The border between the U.S. and Mexico was relatively calm Friday, offering few signs of the chaos that had been feared following a rush by worried migrants to enter the U.S. before the end of pandemic-related immigration restrictions. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The border between the U.S. and Mexico was relatively calm Friday, offering few signs of the chaos that was feared following a rush by worried migrants to enter the U.S. before the end of pandemic-related immigration restrictions.
Less than 24 hours after the rules known as Title 42 were lifted, migrants and government officials were still assessing the effect of the change and the new regulations adopted by President Joe Biden’s administration to stabilize the region.
“We did not see any substantial increase in immigration this morning,” said Blas Nunez-Neto assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. He said the agency did not have specific numbers.
Migrants along the border continued to wade into the Rio Grande to take their chances getting into the U.S. while defying officials shouting for them to turn back. Others hunched over cellphones trying to access an appointment-scheduling app that that is a centerpiece of the new system. Migrants with appointments walked across a bridge hoping for a new life. And lawsuits sought to stop some of the measures.
The Biden administration has said the revamped system is designed to crack down on illegal crossings and to offer a new legal pathway for migrants who often pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to get them to the border. On Friday, Biden commended Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez .. https://apnews.com/article/biden-spain-prime-minister-pedro-sanchez-migration-ukraine-9c3ab7b98d12f35860ff3b9b69744d23 .. for his country’s collaboration with the U.S. and Canada to establish migration hubs in Latin America where asylum seekers will be able to apply for refuge
[Insert: Did Trump ever commend any Central or South American leader for anything. Did he give any a yay except Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un. ].
Migrants are now essentially barred from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they did not first apply online or seek protection in the countries they traveled through. Families allowed in as their immigration cases progress will face curfews and GPS monitoring.
Across the river from El Paso in Ciudad Juárez, many migrants watched their cellphones in hopes of getting a coveted appointment to seek entry. The application to register to enter the U.S. had changed, and some were explaining to others how to use it. Most were resigned to wait.
“I hope it’s a little better and that the appointments are streamlined a little more,” said Yeremy Depablos, 21, a Venezuelan traveling with seven cousins who has been waiting in the city for a month. Fearing deportation, Depablos did not want to cross illegally. “We have to do it the legal way.”
The legal pathways touted by the administration consist of a program that permits up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport.
About 100 processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere for migrants to apply to go to the U.S., Spain or Canada. Up to 1,000 can enter daily through land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on the app.
If it works, the system could fundamentally alter how migrants come to the southern border. But Biden, who is running for reelection, faces withering criticism from migrant advocates, who say he’s abandoning more humanitarian methods, and from Republicans, who claim he’s soft on border security.
At the Chaparral port of entry in Tijuana on Friday, a few migrants approached U.S. authorities after not being able to access the appointment app. One of them, a Salvadoran man named Jairo, said he was fleeing death threats back home.
“We are truly afraid,” said Jairo who was traveling with his partner and their 3-year-old son and declined to share his last name. “We can’t remain any longer in Mexico and we can’t go back to Guatemala or El Salvador. If the U.S. can’t take us, we hope they can direct us to another country that can.”
Farther east, small groups of Haitian migrants with appointments to request asylum crossed the Gateway International Bridge connecting Matamoros, Mexico, with Brownsville, Texas. They crossed with the assistance of a nongovernmental organization, passing the usual commuter traffic of students and workers lined up on the bridge’s pedestrian path.
In downtown El Paso, a few dozen migrants lingered outside Sacred Heart Catholic Church and shelter where as recently as Tuesday nearly 2,000 migrants were camped. Faith leaders in the city are striving to provide shelter, legal advice and prayer for migrants as they navigate new restrictions.
The Rev. Daniel Mora said most of the migrants took heed of flyers distributed this week by U.S. immigration authorities offering a “last chance” to submit to processing and left. El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said that 1,800 migrants turned themselves over to Customs and Border Protection on Thursday.
Melissa López, executive director for Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services at El Paso, said many migrants have been willing to follow the legal pathway created by the federal government, but there is also fear about deportation and possible criminal penalties for people who cross the border illegally.
Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House shelter in El Paso and coordinator for a regional network on migrant shelters, said he fears that migrants passing through Mexico may be diverted by smugglers away from cities with humanitarian infrastructure toward remote, desolate stretches of the border. He said thousands of migrants are currently passing through two U.S. immigration processing centers in El Paso, amid uncertainty about ensuing deportations and monitored releases.
The lull in border crossings follows a recent surge of crossings by migrants in hopes of being allowed to stay in the United States before the Title 42 restrictions expired.
Title 42 had been in place since March 2020. It allowed border officials to quickly return asylum seekers back over the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The U.S. has declared the national emergency over, ending the restrictions.
While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.
Border holding facilities were already far beyond capacity in the run-up to Title 42's expiration. Officials had orders to release migrants with a notice to report to an immigration office if overcrowding and other factors became critical.
But late Thursday, a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump temporarily halted the administration’s plans to release people into the U.S. and set a court date on whether to extend the ruling. Customs and Border Protection said it would comply, but called it a “harmful ruling that will result in unsafe overcrowding.”
Other parts of the administration’s immigration plan were also in legal peril.
Advocacy groups including the ACLU sued the administration on its new asylum rules minutes before they took effect. Their lawsuit alleges the administration policy is no different than one adopted by Trump, which was rejected by the same court.
The Biden administration says its rule is different, arguing that it’s not an outright ban but imposes a higher burden of proof to get asylum and that it pairs restrictions with other newly opened legal pathways.
ACLU National Political Director Maribel Hernández Rivera said many new required steps were unrealistic.
“Asylum is not something you schedule when you are fleeing for your life,” she said.
___ ADVERTISEMENT
Gonzalez reported from Brownsville, Texas, and Spagat from Tijuana, Mexico. Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Christopher Sherman in Mexico City; Julie Watson and Suman Naishadham in Tijuana, Mexico; Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico; Maria Verza in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Gisela Salomon in Miami; and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico contributed to this report.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
