Law Commons^™

The French Republic had a problem. Foreign nationals had flown into the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris and claimed the right to stay as refugees seeking asylum. Unwilling to have the supposed refugees imposed upon it, France resolved to process their claims without letting them into the country. How? By keeping them in the airport’s international transit zone—the area between the exit doors of airplanes arriving from abroad and the far side of customs and immigration clearance. This split border allowed France to summarily process and (typically) deport the foreigners while keeping them outside the country’s territory for asylum …