100 days before the start of the 2024 Olympic Games, hundreds of migrants were evicted from an abandoned office building in the southern Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine on Wednesday, according to AFP. French authorities ordered them to board buses to other parts of France, namely the central city of Orleans or Bordeaux in the south-west.

Up to 450 migrants were living there, according to NGOs who visited. Most were documented but waiting to be housed. The eviction was announced earlier in the week and some chose to leave, but around 300 remained and were escorted away by police in riot gear on Wednesday - with their belongings in bags, suitcases or trolleys.

Charities insist these moves are part of a PR offensive to make the city look better before tourists arrive for the Olympics. "There are places in shelters near Paris, but clearly they want to move them out of the capital. Especially before the Olympics," said Paul Alauzy, representing the medical charity Doctors of the World.

The deportees included young men, but also women with children. Holding documents in plastic folders, they explained their situation to immigration officials seated behind tables. Some in the French they knew, others in the broken English they could speak.

At one table, an official tried to persuade a young man to try his luck in Bordeauxx. "You know, France isn't just Paris. Bordeaux is nice, it's warmer than here," she said. He was also attending a training course in the capital region, so he was directed to another table where a colleague was arranging accommodation near Paris, according to AFP.

Many of the migrants said they did not want to leave the Paris region. "I want to stay here," said Abakar, a 29-year-old Sudanese man. He said he had been promised a job in a supermarket and was in Paris for a logistics course.

Merci Daniel, a mother from Sudan, recounted more personal dramas related to the occupation of the office building, stressing: "I sent my children to a shelter nearby because there was too much violence." 

After expressing her uncertainty about moving elsewhere and not seeing her children, she was found a hotel room on the outskirts of Paris, but only for a few days. No one knows what will happen after that. 

As well as the fears of those being relocated, communities in towns outside France have made clear their resentment at having to take in migrants from Paris, with mayors in rural France and small towns becoming increasingly angry.