France’s own interior ministry says foreign nationals committed 87 percent of thefts and 61 percent of sexual violence cases on Paris-region public transport in 2025.
Quick Take
- Interior ministry figures show foreign nationals made up 87 percent of suspects in non-violent theft on Paris-region trains and buses in 2025.
- The same data set found foreign nationals accounted for 61 percent of sexual violence suspects on the network.
- Earlier ministry reports showed similar patterns, including a 2020 breakdown putting foreign suspects at 92 percent of thefts and 62 percent of sexual assaults.
- Critics note suspect counts are not conviction rates, and one Paris police figure put the citywide foreign crime share closer to 48 percent.
What The New Numbers From The Interior Ministry Show
France’s interior ministry released fresh crime data covering the Île-de-France transport network, which includes Paris and the seven surrounding departments. The figures show foreign nationals made up 87 percent of suspects in non-violent thefts committed on trains, buses, and metro lines in 2025. That number covers pickpocketing, bag snatching, and similar theft crimes reported to police across the region.
The same ministry breakdown found foreign nationals accounted for 61 percent of suspects in sexual violence cases on that same transport system. These numbers come from suspect identification during police investigations, not from court convictions. Still, the scale of the gap between foreign nationals’ share of the population and their share of suspects is what has kept this data at the center of France’s ongoing immigration debate.
This Is Not A New Pattern In French Crime Data
This is not the first time similar numbers have surfaced. A 2020 interior ministry report showed foreign nationals responsible for 92 percent of thefts and 62 percent of sexual assaults on the same regional transport network, even though non-French nationals made up only about 18.5 percent of the Île-de-France population at the time.
French law adds a wrinkle here. Statistics agencies can only sort suspects by nationality, French versus foreign, not by ancestry or immigration background. That means naturalized citizens and their French-born children never show up as “foreign” in these counts, even in later generations. Supporters of tighter immigration rules argue this actually understates the real picture, since many repeat offenders eventually gain citizenship.
Where The Numbers Get Disputed
Not every official figure tells the same story. When France’s Le Monde newspaper pressed the Paris police prefecture on a broader claim by President Emmanuel Macron that at least half of Paris crime involved foreigners, the prefecture gave a narrower number: 48 percent of crimes citywide for the first few months of one year, not a blanket yearly share.
French outlet TF1 has also pushed back on how these figures get repeated in public debate, noting that transport sexual violence numbers describe people identified as suspects, not people convicted in court. TF1 reported a related figure of 63 percent for cases tied to a nationality other than French, a wording choice that shifts the framing from certainty to identification.
France’s National Assembly has fielded direct questions on this exact issue, with lawmakers citing interior ministry numbers showing 93 percent of thefts and 63 percent of sexual assaults on Île-de-France transport tied to foreign suspects. Separately, France’s national statistics agency reported that 11,040 people were identified by police or gendarmes for transport-related theft, sexual violence, or assault back in 2019, a reminder that these debates rest on a real and steady stream of victims.
🇫🇷 Foreigners accounted for 87% of simple thefts and 61% of sexual violence on Paris public transport in 2025, according to newly compiled government data.
Maghrebi nationals alone make up 40% of theft suspects nationwide despite representing just 2% of France's population.… pic.twitter.com/KExHjHHs3C
— NewsForce (@Newsforce) September 14, 2026
None of the competing figures erase the core pattern. Whether the number lands at 61 percent, 63 percent, or 87 percent, foreign nationals show up far more often as suspects in Paris transport crime than their share of the population would predict. French officials keep publishing these breakdowns themselves, which makes the debate less about hidden data and more about what France plans to do with what its own government already knows.
Sources:
zerohedge.com, amren.com, crsi-france.fr, tf1info.fr, assemblee-nationale.fr
