Claim-check: French authorities have not described the rioters as migrants

Several widely shared posts describe France's school protests and riots as the work of migrant youths or of second- and third-generation migrant students. French authorities have not described the people they arrested in those terms. Ministers, prosecutors and police have given ages, charges and political attributions, but none of the official statements in the reports read refers to migration background, nationality or origin, and AP and NBC News both report that French officials have not linked the unrest to immigration.

The claim

On October 1, Legal Insurrection published a post headlined as second- and third-generation migrant students rioting across France, and The Conservative Treehouse described the rioters as young migrants. Both rest the migrant description mainly on social media videos and posts, including from the account Visegrád 24; the Legal Insurrection author writes that the videos are hard to authenticate and that native French students also appear in them. Neither cites an official source for the rioters' background. The official statements they quote mention agitators and violent individuals, not migration status.

Foreign political figures made similar claims. On October 6, US President Donald Trump called the unrest "out of control mass migration", Fox News reported. The same day the commentator Nile Gardiner said a significant share of rioters were second- and third-generation migrants, citing no figures, according to The National News Desk on WJLA. After October 17 Trump again blamed immigration, NBC News reports.

What the authorities say about who was arrested

• Age, school phase: in early October the Justice Ministry said 87 percent of more than 5,060 people arrested were minors, Euronews reported. Fox News reported no nationality or immigration status for those arrested.
• Age, October 17: Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said 70 percent of the more than 2,330 people held over the weekend were adults, according to Al Jazeera.
• Paris: prosecutor Laure Beccuau said 77 percent of 557 people in custody were adults and a very high proportion were little known to police. She said it was very hard to draw conclusions about who they were, and many were exercising their right to silence, Anadolu Agency reports. Franceinfo lists the main charges as property offences, group violence and violence against officials.
• Nice: the prosecutor gave ages for all 114 people arrested, from 12 to 49, and said half the adults prosecuted had no prior court record, the local outlet Nice Mag reports. It gives no information on origin.

Whom the government blames

President Emmanuel Macron blamed insurrectionist elements from radical far-left groups joined by numerous criminals, AP reported via CBS News; AP added that authorities said they had not linked immigrants to the rioting. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu blamed the ultra-left, and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said those arrested in town halls had little to do with the student protests, NBC News reports. NBC states that French officials did not blame immigrants.

Where the protests began

The school protests started in Créteil, south-east of Paris, according to Euronews, and in Paris's poorest suburbs, according to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera said in September that most participants were high school students aged about 15 to 18. None of these reports describes the students by origin.

The record

No police, prosecutor, court or established outlet in the reports read identifies those arrested as migrants or as second- or third-generation migrants. The authorities have published no breakdown of those arrested by origin or nationality. The claim is therefore unconfirmed: it is not supported by the official record, which neither confirms nor measures it.