France: Young man with HIV detained without treatment faces expulsion, despite years of residency

For two months, the 23-year-old man has been detained at the CRA in Cornebarrieu (Haute-Garonne), where he has not received his HIV treatment. The associations are asking for a reassessment of his file. Politis was able to reach him.

His voice is weakened, almost inaudible. He seems exhausted. Joes arrived in France at the age of 11, then was adopted by his grandmother. He has 22 today. All his life is here. He went to college and then high school in the North, did two years of art school and then multiplied odd jobs, in catering and sales. In the meantime, he learns that he has HIV. He should have filed his birth certificate at the age of 18 to be officially regularized but he forgot and then covid-19 arrived and the administrations remained closed. He receives an OQTF (obligation to leave French territory).

"I didn't really take it seriously. Instead of challenging her, I preferred to work, keep a low profile, thinking that things would work out, "says the young man. "If my birth certificate had been filed, they could have registered me in the civil registry and I would be French. From there, everything degrades. The man, detained at the administrative detention center (CRA) in Cornebarrieu, near Toulouse, was to be expelled by plane on Monday, June 23 to his country of origin in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A country he doesn't know.

International aid stopped

To avoid being sent back, Cimade advised him to apply for asylum as a matter of urgency to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra). The aim was to re-evaluate his case. A new element was added, as Julie Aufaure, in charge of detention at Cimade, explains: "Care for people with HIV in the DRC is a little better than it used to be. But doubts have returned with the decision by the United States to withdraw its international aid, particularly on health issues".

More and more foreign nationals living with HIV are being refused entry to the country.It was the Pepfar programme (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which financed a very large part of access to treatment in developing countries - particularly the DRC - with almost 54%. However, "this decision is not yet measurable, but there are major concerns on the ground. And the professionals in the field know that this is going to become a real problem very, very quickly", continues Julie Aufaure.

This concern is shared by Adrien Cornec, head of mission for the AIDS charity Aides. He explains that France has had a right to residence on medical grounds since 1990. "But for some years now, the authorities have been calling it into question. We're seeing more and more foreign nationals living with HIV being refused residence. In particular, people who have been refused residency following applications for renewal. In other words, people who have been here for several years.

He adds: "From one day to the next, these people find themselves in an irregular situation, obliged to leave French territory and go to a country where they haven't lived for long and are not guaranteed access to care.

"We were rejected everywhere"

Julie Aufaure admits that Joes' situation is complicated. "We've been rejected everywhere, unfortunately, because the prefectural authorities and the European Court of Human Rights base their decision on the decision of the Office's doctor, who says that the treatment exists.

Joes, for his part, ‘hopes from the bottom of his heart’ for a positive response from Ofpra. Especially as he has been subjected to mockery in the detention centre since his arrival on 6 April. Medical confidentiality has been broken. He has been subjected to ‘moral and physical harassment’ by both ‘officers and detainees’. According to him, the detention centre officers spread the information to everyone in the centre. Some felt sorry for them, others laughed. His fellow detainee added that this stigmatisation was recurrent.

Apart from his roommate, with whom he talks, the young man has withdrawn into himself. "It's still really a wolf's world here. I prefer to be on my own. People can fight over a piece of bread or a cigarette. It's a disgrace", says Joes.

Worse still, he says he has never received his treatment since his arrest. When he arrived, he had a blood test and a check-up a fortnight later. But since then, radio silence. ‘They nearly put me on the plane, in this state, without me having had the treatment...’. As he is HIV-positive, it is essential that he takes his medication every day. The absence of treatment can have serious effects on his health, such as a drop in his immunity, making him extremely vulnerable to other illnesses. According to the Cimade employee, this is a case that ‘borders on the legal’, but she assures us that the procedure is long and going well.

Action still possible

If the asylum application is rejected or deemed inadmissible, Julie Aufaure plans to lodge an appeal with the national court for the right of asylum (CNDA) and ask the administrative court to suspend the deportation until the court has made its decision, but ‘that's pretty much the last option for him’, she says.

Adrien Cornec says he is very concerned about ‘these refusals of residence and their accommodations’. Aides and the other associations are calling for the application of the decree of 5 January 2017, which states that ‘in all developing countries, it is therefore not yet possible to consider that HIV-positive people can have access to antiretroviral treatment or to the medical care required for all carriers of an HIV infection as soon as they are diagnosed’.

The Aides representative alerted Senator Anne Souyris. The ecologist sent letters to the prefects of the Pyrenees and Haute-Garonne, and also directly to the Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau. "We don't expel people who can't be treated in their own country. There's a political issue behind it", she told Politis.

According to the senator, this is a real ‘death sentence’ for Joes, given that international funding has stopped. The senator goes further than the individual case and calls for all the people who could be affected to be automated: "There should be a circular (...). This should also be a textbook case for managing this situation.