The French National Assembly approved in first reading a bill on Tuesday that would allow illegal immigrants deemed dangerous to be held in administrative detention for up to 210 days, or seven months, while awaiting removal.
The bill, known as the Rodwell or “Philippine” bill, was adopted by the Assemblée Nationale on May 5 under an accelerated procedure and will now go to the Senate.
Its measures apply to foreign nationals facing removal who have been finally convicted of offences against persons punishable by at least three years in prison, and who represent “a real, current, and particularly serious threat to public order.”
The proposal follows a previous attempt to extend detention powers that was struck down by France’s Constitutional Council in August 2025.
Under the proposed regime, judges would have to authorize extensions, and the maximum period could reach 210 days in certain cases.
The bill was co-signed by former prime ministers Michel Barnier and Gabriel Attal.
Charles Rodwell, the Renaissance MP behind the bill, told the chamber that the measure would apply only to a limited number of cases.
“Only a few dozen people a year are affected by these measures,” he said, as reported in France’s parliamentary TV channel LCP on May 5.
Rodwell said the bill was a response to the murder of 19-year-old French woman Philippine Le Noir de Carlan, a student, whose body was found in the Bois de Boulogne public park in Paris in September 2024.
According to Le Monde, the suspect, Taha O., a Moroccan national in France illegally, was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to seven years in prison for a rape committed in 2019, when he was a minor.
He was released at the end of his sentence in June 2024, then placed in an administrative detention center under an order to leave French territory, known as an OQTF, while French authorities sought papers needed for his deportation.
He was later released from detention on Sept. 3, 2024, after the authorities had failed to obtain travel documentation.
Le Parisien reported that his administrative detention had been extended three times and that a judge ordered his release after rejecting a fourth extension request, 16 days before Philippine’s murder.
“There is no longer any ‘on the one hand’ possible on security and immigration,” Rodwell said in a May 6 post on X. “The adoption, by the National Assembly, of our proposed bill in memory of Philippine is proof of this. The fight continues in the Senate, before its final adoption.”
The bill has been challenged by politicians on the political left.
“Promising the French that we will solve the problem of terrorism by increasing the duration in an administrative detention center is lying to them,” Socialist MP Céline Hervieu said in 14 April prior to the vote, as reported in LCP.