Paris-area préfecture accused of leaving residents undocumented
More than 200 elected officials and around 20 associations have accused the local authority chief of the Hauts-de-Seine département near Paris of creating a “factory for undocumented migrants” by failing to process residence permit renewals quickly enough.
The Hauts-de-Seine département covers the inner western suburbs of Paris and includes the La Défense business district, as well as nearby towns such as Nanterre and Neuilly-sur-Seine.
The open letter, initiated by the local branch of the Réseau éducation sans frontières (RESF), was addressed to préfet Alexandre Brugère and calls for an end to what the signatories describe as blockages at the préfecture in Nanterre according to French media L’Humanité.
The issue centres around foreigners who are already legally resident in France but are struggling to renew their residency permits.
According to the signatories, applicants are facing difficulties obtaining appointments, unusually long processing times and problems getting responses from the préfecture. They argue that these delays can leave people who were legally resident in France without valid documentation while they wait for their applications to be processed.
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The signatories are calling for processing times to be reduced across all types of residence permits, the return of physical reception at the préfecture and better information for applicants whose files have been blocked.
Between May 2025 and May 2026, the administrative court in Cergy-Pontoise, outside of Paris, issued 2,054 decisions involving the Hauts-de-Seine préfecture, according to figures cited by L’Humanité. That works out to around 158 decisions per month.
This comes as the préfecture says it is already working to reduce its backlog.
In a September 20th update, the Hauts-de-Seine préfecture said processing times for residency permits had fallen by 35 percent between March and August, from 142 days to 92 days. It said the backlog had also fallen by 32 percent between January and August, from 24,000 applications to 16,000, while the number of permits issued each month doubled from 3,000 to 6,000 between January and June.
Brugère has also publicly defended the préfecture’s approach to irregular immigration. In an interview with French media Europe 1 on September 4th, following the legal action brought by the Association des avocats pour la défense des droits des étrangers (ADDE), he said he would not be “intimidated” in his efforts to tackle irregular immigration and said his administration was applying the law “with firmness”.
The ADDE had filed the legal action in July, accusing the prefecture of “serious and systematic dysfunction” in the renewal of residency permits.
READ MORE: Legal action launched against French préfecture over slow carte de séjour renewals
The Local has reported extensively on the problems faced by foreigners waiting for French residency permits.
Back in June, we spoke to the Bouge Ta Pref campaign, which brings together activists, lawyers and unions campaigning over préfecture delays. The group also described the phenomenon as a “fabrique des sans-papiers”, in other words – the creation of undocumented foreigners through administrative delays.
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