The French Parliament definitively approved on Tuesday, June 16, the extension of the administrative detention period to seven months for undocumented foreigners deemed dangerous.

After the Senate—the upper house of the French Parliament—voted, the members of the National Assembly—the lower house—gave final approval to the bill (345 votes for, 177 against) supported by the government, the right wing, and the National Rally (far right).

Undocumented immigrants can be detained in an administrative detention center (CRA) pending deportation if there is a risk they will flee. Currently, the maximum detention period is 90 days, or 180 days for those convicted of terrorism.

The bill therefore extends this maximum period to 210 days on an "exceptional" basis. 

Only individuals who meet these three criteria will be affected:

• The foreign national must be subject to a removal order (OQTF).
• They must have been sentenced in the past to at least five years in prison for certain crimes and offenses.
• They represents a "real, current, and particularly serious" threat to public order.

The bill also extends the maximum detention period for foreigners convicted of terrorism to 210 days.

'One guiding principle: the safety of the French people'

"On this bill, we prioritized effectiveness over posturing," Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wrote on X after the vote. "We had one guiding principle: the safety of the French people," he added.

The bill also includes the creation of a "psychiatric evaluation order" at the prefect’s discretion, to compel certain individuals to undergo evaluation in order to prevent terrorist acts. "This bill mixes everything up: mental health, terrorism, immigration," socialist MP Romain Eskenazi said. The left, unanimously opposed to the bill, echoed these concerns throughout the parliamentary debates, promising to refer the matter to the Constitutional Council.

To defend this bill, some members of parliament invoked the memory of a tragedy: the 2024 murder of Philippine, a student, which had deeply affected the political class. The suspect, a Moroccan man charged with "murder accompanied by another crime as a repeat offender" as well as "rape as a repeat offender," was subject to a deportation order and had just been released from an administrative detention center.

"This law would not have saved" Philippine's life, MP Andy Kerbrat argued, who pointed out that her alleged murderer had been released "after 70 days, well before the current legal limit. Extending the detention period would have changed absolutely nothing."

CRA detention

As a reminder, undocumented immigrants can be detained in an administrative detention center pending their deportation—if there is a risk that they will flee.

According to European law, detaining a foreigner in an administrative detention center (CRA) is a measure that should only be used as a last resort, "in cases where the administration has no other less restrictive means of carrying out deportation," La Cimade, an association defending the rights of foreigners, explained.

In France, being in an irregular situation is an administrative irregularity, not a crime.

Nearly 16,500 foreigners were detained in administrative detention centers (CRA) in metropolitan France in 2025. This figure rises to 40,000 if we include detentions in overseas territories, particularly in Mayotte.