French identitarians protect Italian border against migrants

One hundred members of the movement Génération identitaire” started to block access by illegal migrants to France on the Italian-French border at Vallée de la Clarée. The area is situated in the Hautes-Alpes department.

The majority of the participants are young French people, both men and women, but in their ranks there are also Italians, Hungarians, Danes, Austrians, Englishmen and Germans. They were seen climbing the neck of the snow-covered Echelle pass to “exercise border control”.

“We denounce the lack of courage displayed by the authorities. With a bit of willpower, we could control migration,” said a spokesman for the group, Romain Espino. “We are going to take possession of the pass and see to it that no clandestine immigrant enters France. We will explain to the migrants that what is not human is to let them cross the Mediterranean or that climbing the snow-covered mountain pass is not dangerous. They are not going to find paradise, it’s immoral. Those who have to pay, are the French.”

According to Espino, the 1 762 metre-high mountain pass is “a strategic spot for illegals to cross” from Italy.

Culminant à 1.762 mètres, le col de l’Echelle est situé à six kilomètres de la frontière avec l’Italie.

Over the last year or so, the French department of Hautes-Alpes has seen thousands of young black migrants arrive from Africa,k mainly from French Guinea and the Ivory Coast. in 2016 a total of 315 people were expelled from the department, a number which shot up to 1 900 in 2017.

The French minister of the interior has admitted that up to 50 000 illegals were arrested in 2017 along the French-Italian frontier, which may be only the tip of the iceberg.

“We have decided to renew frontier checks for six months, he said during the recent acrimonious debate on a new law concerning asylum and immigration in the Chamber of Deputies.

Canadian alternative journalist Lauren Southern was also on the scene this morning, reporting live on YouTube. She was accompanied by her American counterpart Brittany Pettibone.

Yesterday Brittany Pettibone flew over the area in a helicopter. “The activists were lining the entire border,” she said. “They have big tents. It looks so cool… We drove everywhere in a huge convoy of about forty cars at least. We also had stickers saying ‘Defend Europe’.”

According to Pettibone, there were “tons of locals” too who were passing through and were “very supportive” of the mission to guard the border.

Lauren Southern described the participants as “just normal people who are saying, ‘We don’t want illegal immigrants'”.