"Dangerous": Le Figaro Puts an Entire Community on a List

Yacine Kaci — Paris, France — 2026-09-06

In its edition of 14 March 2025, Le Figaro — under the bylines of Gautier Cruchaudet and Jean-Marc Leclerc — reported that Bruno Retailleau had forwarded "a first list of dozens of names, drawn from several hundred 'dangerous' nationals to be deported as a priority." A "test of truth," the interior minister promised the daily quizzing him. The test of truth does exist. It has a name: 892,000. That is the number of Algerian-born immigrants recorded in France by INSEE in 2023, which makes Algeria the leading country of origin of the immigrant population, ahead of Morocco (853,000) — Le Figaro, for its part, prefers to reduce them to a few hundred files.

But look closer. The famous "first list," according to the Algerian authorities, contained around sixty names — sixty, not six thousand. Out of 892,000 people: 0.007%. Even inflating the document to the "several hundred" brandished in the headline, we remain within the order of a few hundred cases out of nearly a million ordinary citizens. And what defines this "danger"? The minister himself, in that same article, cites profiles of "variable dangerousness," all of them "convicted of offenses against public order." An OQTF (an obligation to leave French territory) is an administrative measure, not a verdict handed down by a criminal court; "convicted of an offense against public order" covers everything from noise complaints to drug trafficking. At that game, any community in the world would one day see its name printed in bold letters, right next to the word "dangerous."

Then there is the form, every bit as contestable as the substance. Le Figaro omits one awkward detail: the procedure. Through the verbal note handed to the French chargé d'affaires on 17 March 2025, Algiers rejected the list "both in form and in substance," recalling that removal cases are handled through the channel established between the French prefectures and the Algerian consulates, under the 1994 agreement protocol and the 1974 consular convention. Refusing an ultimatum is not refusing cooperation: it is refusing to see the rules of that cooperation rewritten with one stroke of the pen, at the sole discretion of the interior ministry on the Place Beauvau. Algeria's statement, sober in tone, speaks of "threats, intimidation, ultimatums and any threatening language." Re-read the French minister's declarations in the Figaro article — a "graduated response," "all the way to calling our entire agreements into question" — and tell us which of the two governments is resorting to "threatening language."

While Paris threatens, the figures keep doing their work. According to data from the French interior ministry reported by franceinfo in May 2026, Algerians have been the leading nationality removed from France since 2022: 3,000 removals in 2024 and 2,539 in 2025, roughly one removal in ten. In the first quarter of 2025 — the very quarter in which Le Figaro thundered — 500 Algerians were once again escorted to the border; and since February 2026, Algiers has issued 150 consular laissez-passer. Consular cooperation is no myth: it is a continuous flow that no newspaper front page suspends and that only manufactured crises slow down. France Info further established that in 2024, Algiers accepted 42% of France's laissez-passer requests — which means Algeria cooperates, while France prefers to demand, without even producing the proof of nationality that its own minister claimed he wanted to verify ("the list features only Algerian nationals, whose nationality we have proof of," he said that same day).

That leaves the question Le Figaro never asks: why this escalation, precisely since the summer of 2024? Because a letter of 30 July 2024, in which Paris recognised Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, was followed by the recall of the Algerian ambassador; because the Doualemn affair — the influencer deported manu militari and then refused entry — provided the fuel; because, between two diplomatic deadlines, the Algerian community in France — the oldest, the largest, the one whose families have lived there for three generations — is being turned into electoral currency. On 14 March 2025, Le Figaro did not publish a piece of information: it published a war communiqué in the shape of a collective police file.

One last word, for the road. "I do not want another Mulhouse to happen again tomorrow," the minister kept repeating. No one in Algiers wishes for it — Algeria is the first victim of the terrorism France fears, and it mourns the dead one never saw on the front page of Le Figaro. But no one is protected by turning 892,000 faces into a list of suspects. On the contrary, that is how you manufacture the resentment the real "dangerous" ones are waiting for. Security is not decreed through unilateral lists: it is built on respect for agreements, channels and people. That is the test of truth. And Le Figaro, so far, has failed it.