Jean-Luc Mélenchon backpedaling? While Mayotte was devastated by Cyclone Chido last December, and some rebels are calling for continued reception of migrants on the archipelago despite the lack of resources, a video by Jean-Luc Mélenchon recently resurfaced.
In this sequence, broadcast on YouTube six years ago by La France insoumise (LFI), the former socialist minister discussed the situation in Mayotte and pleaded to curb immigration to the territory. “It’s an unmanageable situation. […] The island can no longer accept migratory flows. Physically, we don’t have the space, it’s not the same as in mainland France”he declared in this sequence dated 2018.
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“Everything is saturated”
The former presidential candidate also claimed that “everything is saturated, everything is overwhelmed and no more progress is possible” in Mayotte, but also that “No one can tolerate a situation like this anymore”.
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Jean-Luc Mélenchon spoke on the subject at a time when the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly was examining, in January 2018, an agreement on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters between the French government and that of the Comoros. This convention was eventually adopted in March 2018 by Parliament.
-Change of speech
This position clearly goes against the grain of what LFI has said to date. The rebellious deputy Aurélien Taché notably declared in January 2025 that he did not understand why the “care for people in situations of great exclusion » should be “different in Mayotte than in other French departments”.
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Enough to make Liot MP from Mayotte jump, Estelle Youssouffa, who denounced “an obscenity that crosses the line”: “We have no water, no electricity, and nothing to eat, and you find a way to justify the illegal immigration which continues today. »
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