President Trump urged France Monday morning to seal itself off from the rest of Europe following a weekend of rioting that led to at least 2,400 arrests and reduced the country’s major cities to a state of anarchy.
“The migrants have taken over France,” the president posted on Truth Social. “They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!”
Trump’s call for a border closure landed as French authorities scrambled to contain the fallout from days of violence that hit Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Lille, among other areas. The riots, initially attributed to discontent over the state of education and the high cost of living, have been dominated by far-left adherents and second-generation immigrant youths who raided luxury stores and other businesses.
Also Monday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said he had instructed city prefects to impose “very limited” and “localized” curfews, while defending law enforcement from criticism that cops had lost control of the streets.
“On Saturday, despite scenes of severe violence and extensive property damage, no one was killed, and that is a miracle,” said Lecornu, who added that details of the curfews would be released later Monday.
In the port city of Marseille, which has a large population of North African immigrants, the prefect banned any protest or other gathering from noon to 8 p.m. Local time Monday.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez struck a markedly different tone from the prime minister, acknowledging that authorites had “obviously” lost control “in some of these major cities,” He continued, “You can’t look shopkeepers in the eye when hundreds of businesses have been looted and say” otherwise.
Nuñez had offered his resignation on Sunday, only for President Emmanuel Macron to ask him to stay “given the need for continued command of law enforcement in the current context,” according to a statement from the Elysee Palace. The palace also instructed the minister to “ensure full transparency about the failures in planning and intelligence-gathering that led to the violence.”
“I submitted my resignation because I am responsible for everything that is happening,” Nuñez told France Inter radio, adding that “the real issue is ensuring that this doesn’t happen again … We obviously need to be better at anticipating the kind of mobilization that is unfolding.”
France and 28 other European nations are part of the so-called Schengen Area of free movement, which means identity checks are not systematically carried out on arrivals from those nations.