Leftist Frenchman smuggles migrants into Europe via Italy

A left-wing Frenchman who also enjoys the support of the Socialist mayor in the town of Breil-sur-Roya, regularly flaunts the law by smuggling Africans into France from a migrant camp across the border in Italy. Cédric Herrou, a 37-year-old chicken farmer who enjoys EU agricultural subsidies, has mounted an entire smuggling network to get as many African migrants as possible into France, from where many make their way to Northern Europe.

On 13 August this year Herrou was arrested by French police for his trafficking in migrants, but after 48 hours the prosecutor in Nice concluded that he was doing it, not for profit, but “for humanitarian reasons” and decided not to press charges. So Herrou went right back to smuggling African migrants through railway tunnels in the Alps between Italy and France. He even allows illegals to live on his farm while they happen to be in transit to other destinations in Europe.

The left-liberal New York Times recently carried an article on Cédric Herrou whom it praised as a hero of a world without borders. The newspaper compared French policemen arresting illegal immigrants on trains with Nazis deporting Jews:

“Young African men, some little more than boys, are routinely pulled off trains, in scenes with ugly echoes of the French persecution of Jews during World War II.”

The Socialist mayor of Breil-sur-Roya, André Ipert, not only drinks beer with Herrou but also told The New York Times that everyone in the town was aware of his people smuggling: “Yes, of course, we know. Yes, of course, he is outside the law. This happens in France.”

A lawyer from Paris, Françoise Cotta, assists Herrou in his activities as she lives part time in Breil. “We think we are doing what we should do, as citizens,” she told The New York Times. “Down there I am a citizen, and what I do is illegal. And I help them.”

The French police have their hands full to stem the tide of migrants from the Red Cross camp across the border in the town of Ventimiglia, Italy. When trains cross the border, police in riot gear do spot checks for illegal migrants at the first stop in France, the suburban station of Menton-Garavan. Thousands are sent back to Italy every year, but as a result of Cédric Herrou’s underground network of “humanitarian” people smugglers, their task is getting more difficult all the time.

The sharp Left-Right division that has always characterised French politics and society is mirrored in the public’s approach to immigration. One of Herrou’s comrades, Hubert Jourdan, admits that the French population is divided on the issue, with patriotic Frenchmen informing the police and leftist ones helping the migrants. ““Lots of people have become mobilized (to help smuggle migrants). And lots of people call the police,” he said from his office behind the train station in Nice. There he also accommodates migrants on their way to Paris and the more prosperous nothern parts of Europe.