24 May, Wednesday morning at the Breil-sur-Roya train station (France, border with Italy). They have come from Sudan, Chad or Somalia, fleeing wars, misery and dictatorships. In the video hung on the net by Benoit Guglielmik of the newspaper Nice Matin, you see a smiling face.

Most of them are housed on the farm of the young farmer Cedric Herrou, in the valley of Roya. The day before, he had called on the authorities to be handed over to the authorities by a few hundred people. He and the volunteers of the association Roya Citoyenne will accompany you on the journey, one hour by train, to Nice.

Together with the illegal immigrants from Nice, volunteers and lawyers will give a press conference in which they will demand global and effective solutions for refugees. Then, immigrants and companions head to the Estien-D’Orves Natural Park, where they eat a small pic-nic, distribute the clothes and start making the paper legal accounts. In French, in English, with improvised interpreters in other languages… to advance the work before going to the officials.

The Front National has a great force in the department of the Maritime Alps. The right has denounced that, with their help, volunteers attract more illegal immigrants to France. “That’s silly,” Herrou says. “If you look carefully, we help the authorities to have some control over immigrants arriving in France.” Expelled from the park by the police, they will have to spend the next night somewhere: they will have to be in the square in front of the prefect's residence. Upon submission of paper requests, volunteer support will be needed to stay safe until the response is received.

Cedric Herrou has not changed his attitude despite the fact that last January he was sentenced by the courts to a fine of EUR 3,000 and eight months in prison. “Doing nothing would make me an accomplice in a crime against human beings,” he told the judge during the trial, when he was accused of helping to pass at least 200 illegal immigrants. Born in Nice in 1979, he is a neo-rural, a new baserritarra that comes from the street to the mountain. He lives from the sale of olives and hens' eggs in the markets. The Guardian presented in April the documentary Haraneko errebeldeak (The Valey Rebels), which narrates the story of Herrou and his friends as the mugalari of the valley.

In the evening, a small car is following its march on the tortuous roads crossing the border with Italy. They've called Herrou over the phone. When you reach a certain location, six African fugitives will stand in the dark and get into the car. This is the case many nights on this part of the border.

When in January he received a prison sentence that he did not have to comply with if he did not make the mistake again, the journalists asked him if he would continue: “If the problem persists, I will remain the same. I have people at home and I have to take care of it. I can't distinguish between whites and blacks, legal and illegal. It’s not my job, I’m baserritarra, my job is to feed people.”

Most immigrants arrive in France until the last station in Italy, Ventimiglia. He was arrested for the first time for bringing several Eritrean women and children to his home in Ventimiglia, according to Italian police reports to the French. On that occasion, the Prosecutor decided that he had taken humanitarian action.

60 fugitives on humanitarian camping

Since then, Herrou has been working under the Roya Citoyenne partnership. Soon, society arrived and arrived, as many as 60 refugees as possible in the vicinity of a small hamlet, and began to introduce immigrants into abandoned facilities of the railway company SNCF. In the second arrest, for illegal occupation and for the illegal entry of immigrants into French territory, Interior has reported.

“Three Eritrean minors were watching a video in this caravan, the police and the crew arrived! They took them away. They use immigrants as if they were cardboard boxes, if they're in a poor state, they take them and they take them. But they are men! People who, with their past and desires, have families waiting, love a man or a woman, love their children and their parents, cry for their parents who stay in Italy or who died on their way. They're not bitty cardboard boxes!" But they bother.

In Libya, there are one million migrants waiting to receive between four and five thousand euros from smugglers who have arrived from sub-Saharan countries. From there, crossing the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa. From here to the shore of Italy, passing the peninsula up, to reach the border with France.

The trains and highways between Ventimiglia and Menton are very controlled, so many immigrants try to get from the Roya Valley through the river basin that is watered down in Italian lands but which is born in France: Breil-sur-Roya, Saino, Tende, Sospel… The border is as clumsy as the roads.

The population of the valley has given shelter to hundreds of immigrants. Nathalie and Raphaël are found in the world of theatre and have been found on their way home many times at night, just like lost in the snow. “When I took someone for the first time, it was 14:30 in the afternoon, I was going with the little one and I saw someone walking in the middle of a storm. They were three, very young. I had to receive it. They had spent the night on foot, along the way. Wondering where they were going, they told me ‘to Paris’, but they were going in the opposite direction, ‘do not go to Paris, go back to Ventimiglia’ and when they heard it they burst.”

Every refugee brings a story that tells, often without losing a full smile, the most dramatic events, wars, expulsions, incarceration, torture, the dramatic crossing of the sea, submerged friends… Many are minors.

As The Guardian reporters rodan, Herrou sells eggs in Breil Square, the gendarmes have approached him to deliver them. A courtesy squeeze. The surreal dialogue. The police officers who have to apply the suspect mugalari on the spot and those who have imposed themselves at a distance are co-actively involved. They are seen to be respected. Police say that a bus is coming to take the refugee children to a hostel, where they are, I don't have a mobile to start with, you have to bring the younger ones, as they haven't done before, call everyone who has the refugee children… The police are making lists, the buses are waiting, the children's hugs are going to the volunteers and they're leaving. But there are many immigrants on their way to Europe, this flood is not going to run out.