“Even an hour here is hard, never mind weeks,” Amadou from Mali told CGTN.

“It’s like I’ve been in a little hell, and I’ve been forced to live here,” said Amadou, who like most in France wants to apply for asylum.

French police have evacuated a migrant camp in northern Paris, putting around 1,600 people into emergency accommodation.

And NGOs said the majority of them now risk being deported, under France’s new, tougher asylum rules. 

What few of the migrants realize is that the majority of them are unlikely to be allowed to even file an application, about three-quarters of them have already been fingerprinted in another European country, and that means they can be sent back there, under the Dublin regulation. 

Charities said many of those living in the camp have already applied for asylum and been rejected in another EU country, which also made them ineligible in France.

The government said it is simply enforcing existing European law, and Interior Minister Gerard Collomb has said a less tough approach would lead to “asylum shopping.” 

"We have to have the same rules as Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, wherever, because if not, people see where it’s easiest to apply for asylum, and everyone goes there,” he said in March.

French MPs recently approved a new law aiming to increase the number of deportations, halving the amount of time applicants have to appeal a rejection and doubling the time they can be held in immigration detention. It also creates a new offence of crossing the border illegally.  

The law still needs to pass the Senate, but NGOs say it’s already being applied on the ground.

They also said the approach is counterproductive, because many of those who are deported to Italy are back on the streets of Paris just a few weeks later. The city’s mayor agreed and has accused the interior ministry of allowing camps to spring up to encourage anti-migrant sentiment.

“This is where we disagree with the state,” deputy mayor Dominique Versini told CGTN. “If they’ve crossed the sea, it’s obvious that they’ve traveled through Italy, they have to be fingerprinted there, but Italy doesn’t want them, so when they get to France they are asylum seekers in the international law sense, and if the state doesn’t allow them to apply, they end up on the streets for six months or a year." If people can prove they’ve been in France at least six months, they are no longer subject to the Dublin regulation. 

The city wants reception centers set up to take care of people as soon as they arrive in France, and prevent the creation of further camps. This evacuation was the 35th in Paris in the last three years.  

For the moment, the camp’s former residents are being housed in school gyms while caseworkers determine who is eligible to apply for an asylum.

But if their cases are not been accepted, they may soon be back on the streets.