Such is the case with regard to the right to communicate “with a legal adviser or any person of their choice” (article L. 221-4). Is a telephone available to foreigners in the police station? If so, under what conditions? If not, can the persons concerned keep their mobile telephones with them? Even if the latter are equipped with a function for taking photographs? And if they are able to keep them, whether these devices – by definition purchased abroad – have international mobile phone subscriptions, how far are they useful and what is substituted for them? These constitute so many questions whose answers are variable and lacking any control. In other words, the effectiveness of the right to communicate is in no way guaranteed. There is all the more reason for doubts with regard to the form of notification of rights and implementation thereof insofar as the orders given to (and the professional interest of) police officers are to ensure that the greatest number of persons leave the country as quickly as possible, so as to avoid any “build up” of the presence of foreigners at the border. Ideas of the following kind thus quickly prevail: the less foreigners are informed of their rights, the easier it is to take them back to their point of departure. Or, still worse, to ideas according to which foreigners’ rights only commence when they are admitted to an accommodation area and, as long as they have not been so admitted, they can leave France without any formalities. Interpretations of this kind are nonetheless contrary to the text: the waiting area does not begin at the place of accommodation but at the “points of embarkation and disembarkation” (article L. 221-2). Foreigners present in police stations are thus already “held” in detention. Yet, as already emphasised15, the differences in treatment arise exclusively from the assessments made by police officers. These can vary. Thus, the period for which a foreigner can remain “unadmitted” in the police station before being “held” in an accommodation area varies from one waiting area to another: two hours here, four hours there (no national orders exist with regard to this point). In any case, nobody is able to verify the application thereof. Although the precariousness of a foreigner’s condition in a police station rules out their being held there for several days, a period of half a day does not, in reality, pose any problem. It is obviously not possible to assert that the difficulty is removed by the fact that, at the time of their arrival foreigners can, in theory, request the granting of a period of one clear day before being obliged to leave. It has already been stated – and even repeated – how the officers themselves completed the forms at the time of decisions of refusal of entry, including with regard to waiving the benefit of a clear day on the part of the foreigner16. In an exchange of correspondence on this point in the course of the year 2013, the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior once again asserted that the police are careful to ask for the opinion of persons refused admission. The Contrôle Général maintains all of its observations and recommendations in this regard. There is no reason for thus dividing the procedure applicable to foreigners refused entry, and no provision of the law to support this practice. The reduction of these differences requires several recommendations. On the one hand, the law (article L. 221-4) needs to specify that rights to which foreigners are entitled are applicable whatever their location in the waiting area and whatever the length of the period for which they are held in the waiting area. 15 16 Annual Report of the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté for 2012, p. 21. Annual Report for 2012, ibid. p. 22. 22