PARIS — A French court rejected on Tuesday a request for residency from the family of Leonarda Dibrani, a teenage Roma girl whose expulsion from France sparked days of protests and a national controversy last year.
In October, President François Hollande intervened after Ms. Dibrani, 15, whose family had been living illegally in France for five years, was pulled off a school bus by the authorities and expelled to Kosovo, along with her family. After loud protests, Mr. Hollande agreed to allow the girl back in, but only if she left her family behind, a condition she refused.
On Tuesday, a court in Besançon, in eastern France, ruled that the magistrate handling the case had been justified in upholding an Oct. 9 decision to expel Ms. Dibrani, her parents and her seven siblings. The family can appeal the court's decision.
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The court said Ms. Dibrani's father, Resat Dibrani, had no economic prospects in France, while her mother, who does not speak French, faced obstacles to integration into French society.
After returning to Kosovo, Mr. Dibrani acknowledged that he had lied about the family's origins by saying they were refugees from Kosovo in the hope that they would get asylum in France.
The abrupt expulsion caused an uproar in France, where rights groups argued that her right to an education had been breached. But a subsequent investigation by the French authorities concluded that while the operation could have been conducted with more sensitivity, it was within the law.
In Kosovo, where she has lived since the family's expulsion, Ms. Dibrani reacted to the ruling by threatening to kill herself. "They would have been better off killing us because here there is no life, and no justice, but injustice," she was quoted as saying by Le Monde. "I am going to kill myself because here we have no life. My country is France. Here we are starving from hunger, we were sent here to die."
The family's lawyer, Brigitte Bertin, told the French news media that six of the seven Dibrani children were born in Italy and one in France. She said that the children were not getting a proper education in Kosovo in contravention of their rights.
The case spawned a loud debate on illegal immigration in France, where many of the 20,000 noncitizen Roma, a majority of whom come from Romania and Bulgaria, live in decrepit camps on the margins of French cities. Brazen begging and pickpocketing by young Roma children and lurid reports of Roma thievery in the French media have helped fuel protests against Roma. The far right has seized upon the issue ahead of municipal elections in March.
Late last year, the interior minister, Manuel Valls, attracted both criticism and applause after he said that only a minority of Roma could fit into French society, implicitly suggesting that they should leave.
Rights advocates have argued that pulling Ms. Dibrani out of school was inhumane. They say that the Roma face deliberate social exclusion. But others counter that rights come with responsibilities and that the family gave up its claim to remain in the country by living here illegally.
