ICE raids spark French debate, outrage — and some calls to copy US tactics

PARIS (CN) — ICE has forcefully broken into the French political discourse.

The recent killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis have sparked widespread debate across the spectrum. The left is using tactics by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a warning about what will happen should the extreme-right come to power in France — the extreme-right has openly expressed desire to import the system.

ICE garnered even more nationwide attention when French media reported Monday that a U.S. subsidiary of Capgemini, the French technology services giant, signed a contract with the Trump administration worth up to $365 million to help locate and track undocumented immigrants under the program.

“I urge Capgemini to shed light in an extremely transparent manner on its activities, on this policy and undoubtedly to question the nature of these activities,” France’s Minister of Economy Roland Lescure said at the National Assembly Tuesday. “A company with subsidiaries should know what is happening within its businesses.”

Capgemini said Thursday the contract with ICE to track migrants was suspended as it sought to cushion a public backlash.

On Wednesday evening along the banks of the Seine, across the street from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, at least 150 protesters gathered to demonstrate against ICE’s violent tactics and show solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Hand-painted signs bore phrases like “Make Orwell fiction again” and “Fuck the genICEstapo.”

The crowd was mostly composed of Americans living in Paris, alongside some French residents and tourists. But the demonstration was also political; lawmakers from the left-wing Greens and Socialist groups were scattered throughout the group.

Jean-Claude Raux, a deputy from the Greens, described how many French people have been “absolutely stunned” and “very worried” about what’s happening in the United States. They saw it coming little by little, he said, but the past few days have brought us to “times we thought were far away.”

“We are mobilized to make sure" the far-right never comes to power, he said. “I think it should open our eyes to what’s happening in other countries, to what awaits us if we aren’t able to wake up, because right now, I imagine it’s really a living nightmare for Americans.”

Along the sidelines of the demonstration, one woman who asked to go by her first name, Taylor, held a sign denouncing ICE as bounty hunters. The Trump administration prompted her, along with her family, to move to Paris from Louisiana last May.

“Being here and seeing online what’s going on in America, I’ve been sick to my stomach for like, two weeks,” she said. “I had this feeling in 2016, I just want to be here to do something with the anger that I feel, with the injustice that I see.”

Taylor said she’s particularly troubled by her feeling that being a Christian in American has become “synonymous” with Trump and the Republican Party. When she saw scripture in an ICE promotional video, she was deeply troubled. But she said in France, she has been able to more easily express her thoughts without fear of reprimand.

“What else are you gonna do? When you see injustice, you’re gonna protest. When you see the government lying, you’re gonna protest. When you feel like your rights are being taken away, you protest,” she said. “And that’s just something that I’ve understood to be more culturally acceptable here.”

Throughout the protest, the crowd broke into chants like, “We want justice, we want fight, we want ICE out of sight.” Volunteers handed out voter registration cards, and made sure the Americans living abroad knew when and how to register.

Mary Anderson and her husband, Keith, were standing along the edge of the quay, overlooking the river. Two months ago, they sold their house in Minnesota, put their belongings into storage and decided to travel around Europe.

Anderson held a sign reading “ICE = Human Rights Abuse” alongside a photo of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy still thought to be detained by ICE. A description of his case was translated into French.

“I feel like they’re killing our neighbors and our friends,” Anderson said. “This is not America.”

While France’s left uses ICE as a warning against the dangers of far-right leadership, some major extreme-right figures are embracing the group in their political discourse.

“It’s certain that ICE represents a model for many far-right parties in Europe who have the issues of immigration, fear of the great replacement, etc., as their hobbyhorse,” Arnaud Mercier, a political scientist at the Panthéon-Assas University Paris II, said.

Éric Zemmour, one of the loudest voices on the most extreme of the far-right, told a French TV channel on Sunday ICE is an immigration model that should be imported, and it would have to be “ruthless.” He later said he found nothing wrong with Trump’s tactics.

Meanwhile, the prominent government adviser Arno Klarsfeld is under investigation for the “breach of professional ethics” after he talked about rounding up immigrants on the extreme-right TV French channel CNews.

“If we want to get rid of deportation orders, we need to organize large-scale raids, like Trump did with ICE, across the country,” he said. “But by organizing large-scale raids, we mean trying to catch as many undocumented immigrants as possible.”

The National Rally, the extreme-right group led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, has remained relatively silent on the issue. The group has been undergoing a de-facto normalization campaign to distance itself from its xenophobic past, and has been tiptoeing around sensitive social issues.

Gilbert Casasus, a prominent political scientist, described how the group has also traditionally been anti-American under Le Pen’s leadership but now finds itself in a position where aligning with Trump could be beneficial.

“It’s a bit of a game of what we would call, in a slightly outdated language, ‘objective allies,’” he said. “And now, [roughly a year before the French] presidential elections, we see that part of the French far-right — Zemmour, others, but perhaps also Bardella — given Donald Trump’s positioning, are taking increasingly favorable positions towards the American model.”

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