Gavin Mortimer

This month Pakistan has expelled more than 80,000 Afghans in what the government has labelled its Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan. In total, since September 2023 the United Nations estimates that approximately 910,000 Afghans have reluctantly returned to their country. Many of these are holders of Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC), which were given to them when they arrived. The Pakistan government has given Afghans until today to leave. After this, they will be forcibly deported. The Interior Ministry has warned landlords that ‘strict action’ will be taken against them henceforth if they provide accommodation to undocumented Afghans. Pakistan justifies the mass expulsion on security grounds, alleging that many Afghans 'contribute to rising criminal activities within its borders'.

These have been terrible days in France. On Thursday, a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death and several of her classmates wounded at a private school in Nantes. It was an attack of singular ferocity. The victim, who was stabbed 57 times, was killed by a fellow pupil, a boy her own age. According to police, he had no ‘clear motive’ for his crime. On Friday a 20-year-old, named by police as Olivier H, walked into a mosque in southern France and told Aboubakar, a 24-year-old of Malian origin, that he would like to pray. Aboubakar, who performed odd jobs in the mosque, led Olivier into the prayer room and together they knelt. Olivier then produced a knife and stabbed Aboubakar to death.

Migrants have been pouring into the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa this month. Over 100 on Monday and 344 on Wednesday; the previous week 269 landed, and at the start of April more than 1,000 arrived in a 48-hour period. They are Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, Guineans, Moroccans, Syrians, Malaysians, Somalis and Senegalese but the three nationalities most heavily represented are Bangladeshis, Egyptians and Pakistanis. Most told their rescuers that they set out from Libya. So much for Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to persuade Libya to work with her to stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean. Last year the Italian PM, supported by the EU, signed deals with Libya and Tunisia; in exchange for mountains of cash, there were promises to stop the small boats leaving for Lampedusa.

France has overtaken Germany as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers. During the first quarter of 2025, France registered more than 40,000 applications, just above Spain (39,318) and Germany (37,387). This is a 41 per cent drop in German applications for the same period in 2024; Interior Minister Nancy Faeser attributed the fall to a 'strong package of measures, Germany's own actions and close European cooperation'. Germany has been Europe’s destination of choice for asylum seekers since 2011. The country was considered the most welcoming, in part because of the impression cultivated by the former chancellor Angela Merkel, who issued an open invitation to migrants and refugees in 2015.

A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home. The violence began on Sunday evening and is ongoing: overnight three vehicles were set ablaze outside Tarascon prison in the Côte d'Azur region, and a fire was started in an apartment where a prison guard lives close to Paris. Graffiti was also sprayed on the wall. No one has been hurt but the coordinated attacks, carried out the length and breadth of France, have shaken the Republic.

Irregular border crossings into the European Union dropped by 31 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 33,600. The figures, released by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, appear to show that the EU is getting a grip on illegal immigration. The gangs in charge of the people-smuggling trade are becoming ever more sophisticated and cunning But figures can be misleading. The biggest fall in irregular entries was the Western Balkan route, down 64 per cent on the same period in 2024. This is largely attributable to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Zone on 1 January this year. As a result, more border police have been deployed and evidently they’ve been successful in controlling the frontiers.

Last week, the police in Britain launched a three-week operation codenamed ‘Machinize’. It began with nearly 300 raids on nail salons, vape shops and barbershops, which in recent years have become a common sight on British high streets Thirty-five arrests were made and 97 people suspected of being victims of modern slavery were placed under police protection. More than £1 million was frozen, money the police believe is ‘dirty’, generated by Albanian and Kurdish gangs that control much of Britan’s organised crime such as drugs and prostitution. They also are heavily involved in the people smuggling business, a fact noted in 2022 by Dan O’Mahoney, then the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander.

At the start of the month, J.D. Vance delivered the address at the Heritage Foundation in Washington for the premiere of a documentary. ‘Live Not By Lies’ is based on the book by Rod Dreher, who is a friend of the American Vice President’s. Vance informed his audience that backstage Dreher told him of a recent interview he had given to a French newspaper. Broadcast on Le Figaro’s online channel, Dreher was described in the tagline as an ‘American intellectual and friend of J.D. Vance’. As Vance joked, maybe that 'was meant to tarnish [him] in that country'. It may have been. France does appear to have an axe to grind with Vance, even a centre-right newspaper like Le Figaro. The left-leaning media is more blatant in their hostility. 'J.D.

The right rarely take to the streets in France, but thousands gathered in Paris on Sunday to hear Marine Le Pen pledge to continue the fight. The leader of the National Rally was convicted of embezzlement last week, and among her punishments was a five-year political disqualification. She told her supporters she was a victim of a ‘witch-hunt’ and they roared their agreement. Le Pen had assembled her MPs and supporters in the Place Vauban, in the shadow of the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a retirement home for old soldiers. In the days leading up to the rally, some of Le Pen’s political adversaries had warned she was leading the country towards insurrection. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the far-left firebrand, talked of ‘sedition’.

Marine Le Pen’s political career ended this morning when a Paris judge found her guilty of misusing EU funds. She was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, two of which are suspended and two will be served under an ankle bracelet. She was also fined €100,000 (£84,000) and disbarred from politics for five years. Few anticipated such a severe sentence – it is one that will send shockwaves not just through France but across Europe. Also convicted alongside the leader of the National Rally were 24 other party members – including eight MEPs – all found guilty of channelling €2.9 million (£2.4 million) of EU money to their own party’s coffers.

It has long been said by some of Emmanuel Macron’s opponents that he is a president who ‘governs by fear’. It began with his management of Covid five years, when he imposed on France one of the most stringent lockdowns in the world. ‘We are at war’, he declared in a televised address to the nation on 16 March. Now he is at it again, issuing dire warnings about the possibility of war just as America, Russia and Ukraine have started talking about peace. There is still a long way to go before the conflict in Ukraine ends, but the President of France appears pessimistic about the chances of peace.