I was in Paris in 1999 with my family. We walked from our hotel near the tourist part of Paris to the Gare du Nord to see how long it would take to get there to catch the train to London the next day.

We kept walking past the train station a block or two and found ourselves in a very heavily dominated Muslim/Middle East area which we then had to walk through.

They have always been right there, I guess they are just feeling comfortable moving out further around the station and surrounding streets.