Deadly knife attack reignites France’s politically charged immigration debate

PARIS — French Prime Minister François Bayrou will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to draw up a response to a deadly weekend knife attack in the Alsatian city of Mulhouse.

The alleged perpetrator of the incident is a 37-year-old Algerian citizen, a French Interior Ministry representative said. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said the suspect had a “schizophrenic profile” and had previously been expelled from France — but was subsequently barred from entering Algeria by local authorities.

“The Mulhouse assassin had been presented 10 times to the Algerian authorities so that his country of origin would accept that we send him back home,” Bayrou told reporters on Monday during a visit to the Paris International Agricultural Show. “It’s unacceptable.”

The attack, which President Emmanuel Macron described as an act of Islamist terrorism, has reignited debate in France on whether to rein in immigration amid a Europe-wide shift to the right. How the government responds will likely affect its increasingly strained relationship with Algeria, a former colony, and could have political ramifications for Bayrou and the increasingly popular Retailleau, who is vying for the lead of his conservative party, Les Républicains.

Within hours of the attack, Retailleau pinned the incident on what he called France’s insufficiently tough immigration laws, which lawmakers strengthened in late 2023.

“We need to change the rules. Enough is enough,” Retailleau said as he arrived in Mulhouse Saturday evening.

While official figures show no spike in documented migration, Retailleau’s hardline position has been well received. His approval rating now makes him the most popular member of the government, according to a recent survey of 1,005 French voters conducted by polling institute Odoxa.

Perhaps because of this, the interior minister’s stance on immigration has been backed by key members of Macron’s centrist camp and by high-ranking government officials — including the prime minister. Bayrou even took fire from the left last month for claiming it felt like parts of France were being “flooded” with migrants.

The shift in attitude toward migration isn’t limited to France. Across the border in Germany, incoming conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz has vowed to close the country’s borders to asylum seekers after an Afghan man was accused in January of attacking a group of preschoolers in a park, stabbing to death a 2-year-old boy and a man attempting to protect the children.

Merz’s victory on Sunday, and the historic performance of the far-right Alternative for Germany, were seen as both a vindication of his strategy and confirmation of Europe’s increasingly anti-immigrant tilt.

The repatriation issue

Most French ministers have been reticent about policy specifics ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, although government spokesperson Sophie Primas told RTL on Monday that authorities may consider limiting the number of visas granted to Algerian nationals. Primas added that Bayrou’s government is also considering increasing the length of time authorities can detain undocumented migrants to allow repatriations to be properly negotiated.

A report from the French Court of Auditors estimated that only 10 percent of expulsion measures had resulted in individuals actually leaving France.

“When you deliver an order to leave French territory, you need the country where the person is being deported to issue a consular pass,” said Charly Salkazanov, a lawyer specializing in immigration law. Salkazanov said the astonishingly low repatriation rate was due in part to the shaky legal justification for some deportation orders and the fraught diplomatic relations between France and many of the countries where it seeks to deport undocumented people.

Paris and Algiers have enjoyed an inconstant relationship since the North African country gained independence from its former colonizer in 1962 after years of bloodshed. Ties have become increasingly strained in recent years over who has sovereignty over Western Sahara; over Algeria’s detention of French-Algerian author Boulam Sansal; and due to a dispute over Algerian influencers accused of attempting to incite violence in France or against members of the Algerian opposition.

Retailleau has launched his own public crusade against the Algerian authorities, accusing them in January of seeking to “humiliate” France by refusing to accept an Algerian national expelled from French territory. The individual was detained for sharing videos on TikTok urging his followers to harm a critic of the Algerian regime. A series of Algerian nationalist content creators have since been arrested and are being prosecuted at Retailleau’s request.