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Now to an uproar in France over the deportation of a 15-year-old girl. The teenager was taken by police while on a field trip with her school class, and deported to Kosovo along with the rest of her family. Her arrest is being called inhuman and legal or not, many say the action runs contrary to French values. As NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, the episode has plunged the country's already unpopular president into an emotional debate over immigration.
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ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: For the second day, thousands of high school students took to the streets of Paris and other French cities to demand that Leonarda Dibrani be allowed to return to France. The teenager was deported along with her parents and five siblings last week, and anger over the affair has been steadily mounting. Protesting 11th grader Yusef Bonmain says it's not right.
YUSEF BONMAIN: (Through translator) We claim to be a country of human rights and asylum, yet we send a young girl back to a country she doesn't even know and where she has no future?
BEARDSLEY: French media are reporting that the Dibrani family came illegally to France from Kosovo about five years ago because they are Roma - sometimes referred to as Gypsies - and faced discrimination and few opportunities there. This week, French television networks caught up with Leonarda back in Kosovo, and have been broadcasting interviews with her. The teenager describes how she felt being taken away by police in front of her classmates.
LEONARDA DIBRANI: (Through translator) I was so ashamed. Everyone was asking me what I'd done. I was crying. This isn't my home here. My home is in France. I'm scared to go out here, and I don't even speak the language.
BEARDSLEY: Immigrants' rights groups and even members of the governing Socialist Party are calling the conditions of the expulsion shocking. "Explain Yourself, Mr. President," read Friday's front page of left-leaning newspaper Liberacion.
Under fire, Prime Minister Jean Marc Ayrault ordered an investigation into the incident. Speaking to Parliament, he said if children's rights or human rights were violated, Leonarda and her family will be welcomed back to France. President Francois Hollande, who preached a kinder, gentler approach to immigration than his hard-line predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been trying to distance himself from the incident.
But evictions of Roma have continued unabated during Hollande's presidency. This news program shows a Roma camp being razed to the ground by bulldozers in March. The main target of anger is the ambitious, young interior minister, Manuel Valls. Valls sparked controversy a few months ago when he told Le Figaro newspaper that the 20,000 Roma living in France did not want to assimilate, for cultural reasons.
But activists point to the fact that Leonarda spoke perfect French and had assimilated. The far left has called for Valls to resign. Valls says the family had been living in France illegally for several years.
RESHAT DIBRANI: (Foreign language spoken)
BEARDSLEY: In Kosovo, Leonarda's father, Reshat Dibrani, told French television news reporters yesterday that the family had never been to Kosovo before and were actually from Italy. I lied to get asylum in France, he said. Depending on the findings of the inquiry into Leonarda's arrest, the Dibrani family may get to stay in France after all.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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