France Cops Clear Illegal Migrant Camp

French police on Tuesday cleared out a sprawling forest camp known as the "jungle" where hundreds of illegal migrants live as they try to reach Britain.

About a dozen vans carrying riot police arrived at the site in the northern coastal town of Calais and officers moved in on the camp.

Most of the migrants are from Afghanistan, often making costly and dangerous clandestine journeys to reach Europe. A couple dozen immigrants rights activists were also at the site and clashed with police trying to clear the area. There were several arrests.

The migrants themselves, however, remained calm throughout the ordeal. Some of them held signs requesting the right to remain legally in France, others were seen crying to themselves.

French officials said they would be given the option of applying for asylum in France, or getting a free trip back to their home countries. Many of the camp's inhabitants were from Afghanistan or Iraq.

The migrants try to elude the elaborate border security network, including heat sensors and infrared cameras, at the port of Calais or the Channel tunnel that carries the Eurostar trains and other undersea traffic. Nearly a decade ago, many thousands made it across by hopping a ride to Britain. Today only a few make it, but enough to sustain hope.

France's Immigration Minister Eric Besson pledged earlier this year to clear out the camp, viewing it as a public-health nightmare and a haven for human traffickers. It is also a point of contention with Britain, which wants the border better sealed.

Britain is viewed as an easier place than France to make a life, even clandestinely, a view perpetuated by traffickers and family members or friends already there.

Sir Andrew Green of the British group Migration Watch said the problem must be addressed in the U.K., claiming the British government is too lax in deporting illegal immigrants.

Green claimed that 40 percent of the people who enter the U.K., apply for asylum but are rejected, end up staying in the country illegally anyway, creating greater incentive for the Calais crossings.

As many as 1,000 people at a time have called the "jungle" their home, but after Besson's announcement their numbers dwindled. Besson said that about 250 remained before the clean-out operation began. He said on RTL radio he was heading to the site Tuesday.

Under the French immigration ministry's promised offer, if the migrants agreed to leave the country voluntarily, they can get a stipend; if they meet the profile, they can demand asylum in France; otherwise, they are to be expelled.

In the camp, scores of makeshift tents built from sticks and sheets of plastic sprout from the sand and brush. Piles of garbage litter the scrubland.

The illegal migrants, mainly Afghan men and boys and some as young as 14, bake flat bread over a fire in a tin drum. The only amenities are a spigot of water at the entrance, a homemade toilet hidden behind plastic and, in a scrupulously cleared area, a mosque made of blue tarp and ringed with pots of flowers.

Smaller camps scattered about the region shelter Iraqi Kurds or illegal migrants from other trouble spots.

In the camps, tales abound of journeys by foot, in trucks and boats to reach northern France and of efforts to slip inside or under trucks crossing the Channel.

In 2002, authorities dismantled a Red Cross-run camp in nearby Sangatte, which had been used by illegal migrants as a springboard for sneaking across the Channel in freight trains and trucks. The migrants kept coming back even after the camp was shut down.

With hundreds of the migrants from the "jungle" disappearing in the days before Tuesday's raid, many speculated that they would merely set up camp elsewhere in northern France, or, perhaps return, once the dust settled.