The “Force Frontière” device is the new instrument of control that France and Italy have been experimenting with, allowing the government to direct all the armed forces of the state to “control irregular border crossings”, according to Radio Antxeta. The remuneration of the Rotunda – administrative border – was monitored for 48 hours in operation and nineteen other border crossings were monitored by Force Frontière.

This new border mechanism offers the French Ministry of the Interior an impressive organizational capacity of the police, which in its first attempt assigned 350 agents to the detention of migrants. This allowed macro-control of the border, directing as many agents as possible to migrant control tasks. Thus, the National Police and its subordinate CRS companies, the OLTIM agency and the PAF border police, the Gendarmerie, the Customs Police and the Sentinelle mission of the Land Army were mobilized for two days, La Antxeta reported. However, the radio journalist Aimar López reports that 30 soldiers did not have the power to act as police and did not have the competence to influence the borders outside of wartime.

A total of 135 people were arrested. Twenty-three of them were in the hands of the Spanish Police, since both the Civil Guard and the Spanish National Police were also in control. Eighteen were administratively forced to leave the French State using the OQTF (Obligation de quitter le territoire français). Four others were transferred to the Hendaye Detainee Detention Centre. In addition to these, a person who was allowing money to pass the border was also arrested.

The hardest device of recent times

Aimar López, a journalist from Las Antxes, has suggested that the mobilization of this new device should not be understood in any way as another border control. The strengthening of border controls in recent years has indicated that they were carried out as a result of the "violent" attacks of the Islamic State in Paris, which mobilized under the "anti-terrorist" struggle. But he clarifies that what happened on March 26 and 27 was expressly based on the “fight against clandestine immigration” and warns that there is “a gigantic difference” between the two.

The radio reports that the first person in the Basque Country to do so in ten years "without looking for reasons or excuses" is the "hunt" of migrants in Paris. The Lower Bidasoa media, which attributes the first use of the device to the Minister of the Interior of the LR, Bruno Retailleau, and the Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, has indicated that both are in an intense attempt to bring the French government to the extreme right.