The project to set up an administrative detention center (CRA) for illegal immigrants is creating strong tensions among the inhabitants of the Monteil district, in Pessac (Gironde), near Bordeaux (Gironde). Planned for 2024, on a plot of 19,000 square meters belonging to the State, a building of the police hotel type should replace the current CRA, deemed too small, installed in the basements of the Bordeaux police station.
A total of 210 border police officers should be stationed in this new building which will accommodate, for an average of twelve days and a maximum of ninety days, 140 people who have exhausted their appeals to stay in France, before being returned to the border. To accommodate them, bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, an infirmary, or even a branch of the judicial court will be installed there. Problem: the building will be located in the heart of a suburban area, at exit 13 of the Bordeaux ring road. And the Pessacais do not want it.
Monday, February 21, nearly 300 residents mobilized at a public meeting organized by neighborhood associations. The objective, to federate in a committee in order to make their voices heard. Several points of tension were raised during this meeting, such as the environmental question, with the destruction of a wooded area at the very place where the parking lot of the administrative detention center will be built, as well as the removal of a games and a cycle path that runs along the ring road. “Today, the road network is not adapted to a level of traffic of this type with the vehicles which will enter and leave the car park”, explains Jean-Claude Juzan, president of the committee of defense and the festivals of the district of Monteil. “Residents will also see their properties devalued by 30 to 40%, we have already started to carry out estimates by real estate agents and notaries”he assures.
The inhabitants are also worried about the security of the place. “They have no assurance today that their tranquility will not be disturbed, says Jean-Claude Juzan. We are not opposed to the CRA in itself, but to the construction of this building at this interchange 13 right in the residential area which concerns two hundred dwellings on one side, and a little more than a hundred on the other. »
Implementation solutions not retained
In March 2020, the mayor of Pessac, Franck Raynal (DVD), aware of the problems that the establishment of such a center in a residential area could pose, had proposed another site, that of the Bioparc – economic activity park – located in the municipalities of Pessac and its neighboring town Mérignac. A proposal refused by the national council for the protection of nature after the identification of many protected species. In January, Franck Raynal finds a new solution on land located north of this Bioparc. “This part is perfectly constructible, and a deliberation of Bordeaux Métropole dated January 28, 2022 takes the decision to develop these territories, with a compatibility of the local urban plan, which indicates that the land is purged of any restriction. particularly in relation to environmental issues”, says Mr. Raynal.
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