CALAIS, France — Charles Dufeutrelle used to donate medicine and clothes to the occasional migrant from Afghanistan who came in for coffee at La Gauloise, the bar he owns in Calais, the port city in northern France that has long been a gateway to Britain.
But after a migrant broke into the bar in 2012, Mr. Dufeutrelle, 31, bought a Taser and pepper spray, which he keeps in a drawer near the cash register. And when a group of migrants refused to leave the bar when he asked them to, he pulled out his hunting rifle to scare them away.
That time, the rifle was not loaded, Mr. Dufeutrelle said — but “next time, I will not hesitate to shoot.”
His frustration reflects the resentment and fear that have swept Calais in the last year, along with a new wave of migrants hoping to cross illegally to Britain, which they see as a better place than France to start a new life. The migrants began squatting in vacant buildings and took over shelters in the city center, angering residents and drawing warnings from the local authorities that they could lose control of portions of the city.
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Netherlands
Britain
Germany
Area of detail
Paris
SWITZ.
France
Italy
200 miles
London
Dover
BRITAIN
BELGIUM
Calais
Sangatte
English Channel
FRANCE
50 miles
Many people here fear devastating repercussions for Calais, which is already suffering from 16 percent unemployment, one of the highest rates in France. Anti-migrant sentiment here has buoyed far-right groups like the National Front party, whose support surged in elections for the European Parliament this past spring.
The National Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, visited Calais on Friday to denounce what she called the “scandalous carelessness” of the government in a city where “there is nothing left but survival of the fittest, violence.”
Her visit followed unrest in the city on Wednesday, when fights broke out between rival ethnic groups among the migrants and some tried to force their way onto Britain-bound trucks, prompting riot police to step in. Last month, four young Calais residents threw improvised firebombs at a building occupied by Egyptian migrants in the city center.
“The discontent has turned into a real psychosis,” said Emmanuel Agius, the deputy mayor of Calais and a member of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement party. “The migrants of today no longer fear breaking the laws.”
Tensions started to build in Calais more than a decade ago, in 2002, when a Red Cross center in nearby Sangatte was closed down and migrants started to camp around the port instead. The police have dismantled some camps, but the migrants have rebuilt them in new locations.
The local authorities estimate that there are 2,200 to 2,300 migrants around the city now, mostly men who have fled from Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan or, most recently, Syria. They wait along the highway leading to the waterfront, hoping to hide in a ferry-bound truck and sneak into Britain. Many of them speak some English and believe they can assimilate better there than in France, even though the British government is adamant about not accepting them.
Britain has called on France to do more to stop the migrants, but “we can’t control them anymore,” said Gilles Debove, a local police officer and a member of the main police union.
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About 100 migrants forced their way into Calais’s port last month by tearing down barbed-wire fences. After violence flared this week, the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said 100 more police officers would be sent to Calais.
Mr. Debove said migrants in the city took over vacant buildings, stole money and cellphones from residents, fought among themselves and sometimes sexually assaulted local women. He said 80 crimes had been reported in the city this summer involving migrants, up from six a year ago.
