On Monday 1st August France’s largest “administrative retention centre” (CRA) opened at Mesnil-Amelot near Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Paris. It can hold up to 240 detainees including children and has been build on a modern prison model, with buildings in a star facing towards the centre, surveillance cameras, movement detectors. There is a tribunal next to the CRA and the whole site is encirled with barbed wire. The centre’s opening has been denounced by many French associations including Cimade. (See their press release in French here).