There are currently up to 1000 migrants living rough in Calais[REUTERS]"Our orders are to get rid of the tents and order makeshift structures, and to evacuate those living them," said a gendarme officer at the scene.
He and his colleagues were acting on a prefectural order aimed at bulldozing the camps because of a growing danger to public health.
It follows numerous incidents of young men dying and suffering serious injury as they try to get across to the coast of England.
There are fears that there will be a repetition of the so-called "The Jungle", an infamous camp which was destroyed in 2009 after becoming a magnet for migrants.
Local prefect Denis Robin also said there were particular "fears for public health", especially as the makeshift camps do not have basic supplies like water.
Hundreds of people living in squalid conditions has also led to outbreaks of Scabies, a contagious skin condition caused by tiny mites which burrow into the skin, causing severe itching and rashes.
Charity workers helping refugees from wars in Syria and Afghanistan reacted with outrages to the planned clear-out, blaming it on a shift to the far-right in French politics.
Mr Robin insisted that the clear out would assist the most vulnerable migrants, allowing the sick and aged to get emergency health care.
"Fragile members" of the migrant community, including children, will be allowed temporary accommodation in a holiday camp in the Pas de Calais, while adults can request "emergency housing".
But critics say the migrants will simply be left on the street, without even a roof over their heads. There are currently up to 1000 migrants living rough in Calais, with up to 650 around the port area alone.
Most play a nightly cat and mouse game with the police and border officials as they try to reach Britain in the back of lorries.
Once in the UK they will claim asylum, which entitles them to generous benefits, or disappear into the black economy.
Martine Devries, of the international charity Medecins du Monde, said: "They're taking advantage of treating people for scabies to destroy the camp. It's a waste of equipment and where are the migrants going to go?"
Mr Devries added: "We get the feeling the authorities think once everything is destroyed all this will go away."
Four migrants died in one week alone in March this year.
On March 9 an Albanian man was killed on a motorway outside the town.
Three days later, Ethiopian Mesfin Germa was hit by a lorry as he walked to the port.
The body of a 25-year-old Ethiopian man, Senay Berthay, was found in Calais's Batellerie dock on March 14 and the next day a fellow Ethiopian in his 20s was crushed to death by a car while hiding on a vehicle transporter.
It is thought he had been among a group of three men who got on the truck and then realised it was going in the wrong direction.
Last week another migrant was killed as he fell from the bottom of a British coach which he had been using to try and get into Britain. Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart has long argued that Britain's "generous welfare system" is the real cause of the migrant crisis in her town.
Referring to international treaties governing the treatment of migrants, Ms Bouchart said: "Calais is a hostage to the British. That's enough. It's no longer tenable. It's necessary to renegotiate these accords. We're not here to do their job."
The Socialist government of French president Francois Hollande has continued the policy of razing illegal migrant camps on the edge of major cities such as Paris and Marseille.
Court orders are regularly obtained for their destruction, with riot police moving in with the bulldozers.
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