Paris promised the most socially responsible Olympics ever. It's been moving out migrants

PARIS − Abou is on the move. So is Mamadou. Isaac soon could be. Like characters in "Emily in Paris," they're all can-do young people, though their lives don't fit the fantasy version of Paris portrayed in the Netflix show.

France's authorities promised an inclusive and socially responsible Paris Olympics . The city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, says the Games will be greener, cleaner and safer than any that have come before.

But in what has quietly become an Olympic tradition, activists, non-profit organizations and locals say the host city has already failed to live up to its lofty ideals by forcibly relocating migrant and unhoused people out of areas where tourists will congregate in a practice they describe as "social cleansing."

Abou, Mamadou and Isaac are three young asylum seekers the French government is moving out of Paris ahead of the Games. All three are minors, aged between 16 and 17. None wanted their last names published for fear it could flag them for deportation.

Ahead of Paris Olympics, police oversee evictions, leading to charges of 'social cleansing'

"They really don't care who you are − if you are a student or someone who needs help," said Isaac, from Nigeria. "The police just come and say we need to leave or they are going to come back and push everyone out."

Isaac arrived in Paris a year ago after fleeing an abusive family. He wants to be an electrician. He lives in an abandoned apartment building with several migrants on the extreme southern outskirts of Paris, where the closest Olympic venues are a few miles away. However distant, Isaac and some of the volunteers helping him say the boy's predicament is clearly linked to the Games.

2024 Paris Olympics: Follow along with USA TODAY's coverage

"They're kicking everybody out of the squats no matter where they are and even if they don't want to build something there for the Olympics," said Roxanne Pitchelu, part of a group helping hundreds of youth, mostly migrants like Isaac, get off the street.

Pitchelu, who is also the co-president of a separate volunteer group called Tara that helps migrants with legal aid, said Isaac is a good example of how "a whole system can crush somebody."

She said that as Isaac approaches adulthood, immigration authorities are likely to look less favorably on his asylum application. There's no easy way out.

"He's afraid to go back on the streets," she said.

Olympic Games 'clean up'

Isaac's case isn't an isolated one.

In the year running up to the Games, almost 13,000 marginal Parisians including migrants, homeless people, drug users and sex workers have been moved outside Paris in an effort to present a scrubbed-up version of the City of Light, according to a recent report by Le Revers de la Medaille , a group of rights organizations and local charities.

The collective has been monitoring the Games' impact on Paris' most vulnerable populations.

Many have been bussed to temporary shelters. Across Paris, tent camps have been dismantled in time for the arrival of more than 14,000 athletes from over 200 countries and the millions of extra visitors drawn to Paris for the Games.

Paul Alauzy, who works for aid group Medecins du Monde, said he was initially optimistic that bringing the Games to Paris could mean improved conditions for some of the most marginalized in French society.

France's government has spent billions redeveloping three gritty Paris suburbs that are home to large immigrant populations and that now span the Olympic village.

"The organizing committee was telling us it could really help transform our society," said Alauzy.

"Maybe I'm naive or a dreamer but I was like, 'Yeah, this is the year we're going to win.'"

But as the police operations to clear Paris' streets of perceived undesirables accelerated without what Alauzy and his colleagues considered an effective or sustainable plan, he has questioned what the Games will mean for the poor. He said many of those relocated outside Paris end up back on the streets within weeks.

Part of the plan, or 'brass knuckle forced displacement'

France's authorities don't see it this way.

Camille Chaize, a spokesperson for France's interior ministry, said the resettlements are not related to the Olympics at all and are part of a "broader policy to dispatch" migrants and asylum seekers across France.

She said that because the Paris region has more migrants than accommodation, it makes sense to distribute these asylum applicants across the country. The resettlements would have happened regardless of whether Paris was hosting the Olympics, she added.

Still, in April the French newspaper L'Équipe reported it had obtained an email sent by a government housing official saying city authorities had a goal to "identify people on the street in sites near Olympic venues" and move them.

According to Jules Boykoff , a former U.S. Olympic soccer player who now teaches political science at Pacific University, in Oregon, such tactics are "par for the course" for the Olympics.

He said the Olympics have a "long and ignoble" track record of displacing the host city's unhoused, poor and working class.

"Sometimes it's just brass knuckle forced displacement, like kicking people on the streets."

He said that during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, about 9,000 homeless people were either jailed, taken off the streets in some form or given one-way bus tickets to other states to avoid being "eyesores."

Boykoff said that when Los Angeles hosts the Summer Olympics in 2028 it too will likely face the challenge of what to do with its homeless population, one of the largest in the U.S.

Murky waters: Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo fulfills Olympic pledge by swimming in river Seine

The Games can sometimes benefit host cities.

After the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, that city "got a subway system that people there were happy with," Boykoff said. He said something similar could be said about the 2016 Summer Games in Rio. In Paris, Mayor Hidalgo has invested heavily in new bike lanes. She's attempted to clean up the river Seine .

Clearing out the Maison des Metallos

One place where there does seem to be a direct link between the Paris Olympics and displacement is the Maison des Metallos, the former headquarters of a metal workers union in the Belleville district of Paris. In recent years the space has been used as an art and culture venue for workshops and performances.

Until early July, when they were forcibly removed by police, it was also home to Abou, Mamadou and about 175 other teenagers, mostly unaccompanied migrant minors from West Africa.

They moved into Maison des Metallos after police shut down their tent camp in the nearby Belleville park in April.

Volunteers like Pitchelu, from Tar, and Alauzy, from Medecins du Monde, helped the teens source sheets and blankets to sleep on the floor. Regular meals were served. A small courtyard was used for socializing.

The gate at Maison des Metallos locked at night but otherwise its inhabitants were free to come and go. USA TODAY was denied access to Maison des Metallos by police guards in late June. But outside, a banner was draped across its main entrance that read: "The situation is critical. No housing, no Olympic Games. We are staying in Paris.”

Maison des Metallos' temporary residents were being moved out to make way for an Olympics-related cultural showcase for Japan's government referred to as "Japan House," according to Pitchelu, Alauzy and other activists, who said the details of the contract were read out in a legal case brought by activists seeking to block the eviction.

Japan's embassy in Paris did not respond to repeated attempts for comment. A spokesperson for the Paris' mayor office said that Abou, Mamadou and the other young people inside would be moved to emergency shelters in gymnasiums in and around Paris. The spokesperson did not directly address a question about Japan House.

In a brief interview in a small park opposite Maison des Metallos, Abou and Mamadou, both from Guinea, both 16, said they had big dreams for the future. Both were taking literacy and math classes.

Neither was keen to move to a gymnasium outside the capital.

"In the gyms you have to leave at 8 a.m. each day and then come back at night. It's not good," said Abou.

"I'm calling it the final phase of the social cleansing," said Alauzy, about a week before the Games' grand opening ceremony was due to take place on the river Seine. "There's an evacuation every day now."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paris promised the most socially responsible Olympics ever. It's been moving out migrants