PARIS — France’s National Assembly has adopted a controversial immigration bill that speeds up the asylum process and accelerates deportations after a fierce debate that exposed divisions in President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

After 61 hours of discussion, the legislation, which was slammed by the left as too tough and the right as too soft, was approved late Sunday by 228 votes in favor to 139 against.

Fourteen members of Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move (LREM) party were among the 24 MPs who abstained, and one dissident quit the LREM parliamentary group after joining the naysayers — a rare display of defiance in the usually on-message movement.

Jean-Michel Clement, a former member of the Socialist Party who joined Macron’s party last year, said he had voted with his “conscience”.

Opposition was strongest on the right, with the conservative Republicans and far-right National Front (FN) leading a failed charge for much tougher controls on immigration.

FN leader Marine Le Pen, who won 36 percent of the vote in last year’s presidential election run-off, said the law would lead to a “flood of migration”.

But NGOs were also up in arms.

Within minutes of the vote Amnesty International France issued a statement warning that the “dangerous” legislation, which allows for failed asylum-seekers to be detained for up to 90 days, jeopardized migrants’ rights.

The French migrant-support charity Cimade was also sharply critical of the draft law.

“So men, women and children can be locked up for three months without committing an offense. No government has ever gone so far on locking up foreigners,” it tweeted.

But opinion polls show voters supporting stricter rules, which the government presented as necessary to check the rise of populists who are on the march across Europe.

MPs spent the weekend haggling over more than 1,000 proposed amendments to the bill, which aims to both improve conditions for asylum-seekers by halving the waiting time for a response to six months, and get tougher with those deemed “economic” migrants.

Leftwing opponents lashed out at measures to keep asylum seekers in detention.

“Nothing justifies locking up a kid,” said Socialist deputy Herve Saulignac.

Leftist critics had also complained about plans to cut the time within which asylum-claimers can appeal if rejected for refugee status from four weeks to two, saying they would not have enough time to defend their claim.

They also came out against a proposed “solidarity offense” targeting people who assist border-jumpers, like farmer Cedric Herrou, a farmer who was given a suspended sentence for helping migrants cross into France from Italy.

Meanwhile, France’s interior minister said he would send “significant” security reinforcements to the country’s Alpine border with Italy after a weekend of protest actions by pro and anti migrant groups.

Far-right groups and pro-migrant activists have turned the mountain passes by the border, which are used by migrants travelling from Italy to France, into a stage for “provocations” and “posturing”, Gerard Collomb said.

“Faced with these unacceptable actions,” the minister, whose controversial immigration law was adopted Sunday by the National Assembly, said “significant police and gendarme reinforcements” would be deployed.

The extra security forces will “ensure absolute respect for the control of the border,” he added.

Late Saturday and early Sunday, activists from a small French far-right group blocked a key mountain pass some six kilometres from the Italian border which they say is a “strategic point for illegal migrants”, prompting a furious reaction from pro-migrant activists. — AFP