He sits upright at the table in his lawyer’s office. Sami from Sudan have a mop of frizzy hair, a narrow face and angular teeth. Never give upit says on his black sweater.
His file is on the table.
It also shows what he looks like.
A “clearly visible Adam’s apple”, officers of the immigration police noted during an interrogation on February 3, 2023. His body is “tall and lanky.” And he “smiles shyly every now and then.”
A month later, Sami is examined again, this time by employees of the IND immigration service. They also note that Sami has a prominent Adam’s apple. They also see a ‘slender’ boy with a ‘youthful appearance’, who plays with his cup of water during the conversation. Striking: he draws a small face on it.
It seems to the IND employees to be a foregone conclusion: Sami is a child, not an adult.
Every year, approximately four thousand minors without parents report to the IND. The vast majority say they are sixteen or seventeen years old. These ‘unaccompanied minor aliens’ receive different treatment than regular asylum seekers. They are assigned a Dutch guardian and live in a special minor shelter.
These minors cannot be returned until they are eighteen, even if they are not entitled to a residence permit. They can also try to bring their parents, brothers and sisters to the Netherlands. That is why they are often sent ahead by their families: as a first step towards family reunification.
It is therefore important for the IND to determine whether the asylum seekers are really minors or just pretend to be younger. But how do you do that?
The Netherlands has devised a method for this. All young asylum seekers who cannot prove their age with documents must come twice after arrival for an inspection, a so-called ‘inspection’. During such a session, officials from the IND, among others, try to determine the age on the basis of a fixed number of characteristics, such as beard growth, pimples or circles around the eyes. If in doubt, further investigation will follow.
But what do these kinds of appearances say about someone’s age? In practice, the same characteristics lead to different conclusions, as a sample shows NRC took six ‘inspection reports’. While such an assessment can have major consequences.
On a boat
Sami (NRC only mentions his call sign because he fears that this article will endanger his asylum procedure; his full name is known to the editors) grows up without a father in Sudan, where there is a famine. As a child, he helps his mother to earn some money, for example by selling food at the market. In January 2022, he decides to leave without telling his mother. “Otherwise she would have stopped me,” he says at the office of asylum lawyer Inge Hidding.
With the help of a smuggler, he travels through the desert to neighboring Libya. There, Sami is captured with dozens of young people: anyone who wants to travel further must first pay. His mother sells all her gold to get him released. This is how he ends up on a boat to Europe in early 2023.
In the middle of the sea, the passengers are rescued by the Italian coast guard. “We were taken to the port of Ancona,” says Sami. “We were given shoes and jackets on the quay. And there an officer asked: who are you and how old are you?”
It is pure arbitrariness
At that moment, Sami now says, he only mentioned his year of birth: 2005. The Italian agent makes that January 1, 2005. Sami agrees: he does not want to be registered as a minor in Italy. He has heard that children are being separated, while adult migrants can travel straight through. And Sami wants to continue, he has agreed with fellow travelers to go to Western Europe – preferably to England.
On the French coast, Sami starts to have doubts. “I didn’t dare go out to sea again.” He decides to move on with a group to their second choice: the Netherlands. A year after his departure from Sudan, he reports to Ter Apel as a seventeen-year-old, without papers. Reason for an ‘inspection’, as the policy prescribes.
The immigration service concludes that Sami “evidently” looks like a “minor”. But doubts arise during the inspection by the immigration police. Isn’t Sami’s Adam’s apple a bit big? And that tall, lanky body? The police give him the stamp: doubtful.
And that’s where the problems start for Sami.
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Deliberately misled
If one of the inspection sessions raises doubts, the policy is to run the fingerprints through a European database. It contains everything that is known about the asylum seeker in other European countries. And so the date of birth, January 1, 2005, appears: Sami’s registration in the port of Ancona.
Sami said in the Netherlands that he was born in December 2005, but the Italians wrote January. Those eleven months difference mean everything to Sami. The IND usually assumes that the Italian registration is correct. It makes Sami an eighteen-year-old, who has also lied about his age.
In 2025, the IND refuses Sami asylum. He “consciously misled” the authorities, the rejection says. According to the IND, this shows “that you are prepared to state the truth in order to achieve your goal. This detracts from the reliability of your other statements.”
This happens more often, says assistant professor of immigration law Mark Klaassen of Leiden University. Klaassen investigated for the Migration Advisory Council how ages are determined and concluded that incorrect ages are indeed registered in Italy and Greece. “Minors who arrive in Lampedusa are put in a protected shelter, while adults are allowed to go to the mainland. So anyone who wants to travel on has an interest in presenting themselves as an adult.” His advice to the IND is therefore: do not rely on the age registrations in those countries.
Crooked nose
However, these registrations are usually taken as a starting point as soon as the inspection raises doubts. That makes that first ‘inspection’ so important: it determines whether foreign data will be taken into account or will be ignored.
But how reliable is that chimney? Take the case of J., a Guinean boy. The IND employees see “stubble on the chin and cheeks”, a “suspicious look”, “no young facial skin” and therefore doubt J.’s age. Shortly afterwards, the immigration police noted that he had no stubble and was behaving “childishly”. According to them, he is therefore “obviously a minor”.
If an asylum seeker cannot identify himself, you will still have to estimate his age before you can proceed
In other cases, similar characteristics lead to different conclusions. A boy with a mustache or goatee is classified as a minor in one file, while elsewhere such characteristics give rise to doubt.
Sometimes features are mentioned that seem to have little to do with age, such as “pigment spots” or a “crooked nose.” Behavior also plays a role, without it being clear why. An “active listening attitude” seems to be a sign of youth, while “slouching” or “talking around questions” can lead to doubts.
X-ray
Lawyer Inge Hidding, who handles many of these cases, has been annoyed for some time by the importance attributed to the chimney. “The IND has drawn up all kinds of characteristics that are looked at, but they always turn out very differently. It is pure arbitrariness.”
The problem, says Hidding, is that the inspection has an impact on the entire asylum application. “If your age is not believed, why would the IND believe your other statements? Then you are also lying about that, is the assumption. So then the entire application will be rejected.”
“There is certainly something random in it,” says expert Mark Klaassen. “You can’t tell from someone whether he is sixteen or eighteen.” But the IND has to do something, he says. He advocates expanding the research, with orthopedagogues and physicians who can say something about age development. The IND has not wanted to do that so far.
There is another way. The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) could use an X-ray to reveal approximately how old someone is. Very little use is made of it, according to figures requested from the IND. In 2023, 142 young people received an X-ray, in 2024 157, last year 42. A small part of the several thousand who report annually as unaccompanied minors.
The drug is used “as little as possible”, says the IND. Because of “the radiation burden” for the asylum seeker. And because the NFI also does not determine a precise age. “We determine a minimum or maximum age, based on bone development,” says a spokesperson. According to the NFI, a completely closed collarbone indicates that someone is at least an adult. But if the collarbone does not appear completely closed, the outcome often remains open. “Then we write: possibly underage.” The reason: people do not all develop at the same pace. “Even someone in their late twenties can still have a open collarbone.”
This means that the research is often inconclusive. This is reflected in the figures. In one in ten cases, an asylum seeker who pretends to be a minor turns out to be an adult according to his collarbones. The research costs more than 3,000 euros per person. In three years, the IND spent 1 million euros on X-rays, which resulted in a total of 36 young people being exposed.
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Vaccination booklet
Sami appealed against his rejection and the judge ruled in favor last year. He found his story about the incorrect registration in Italy plausible. The IND had to make a new decision, but rejected him again this year. The agency maintains that Sami lied about his age – and without identity papers it is difficult for him to prove otherwise.
Lawyer Hidding makes a last attempt. “Does your mother really have nothing of you anymore?” she asks in her office. “An old vaccination booklet, or something? It only has to be one thing that has your name in it and then I’m very happy.”
“I don’t have a vaccination record,” says Sami. “Maybe even a school certificate.”
“Yes, something like that.”
“That is with my mother in Sudan.”
“It would be great if she sent it.”
Sami has also appealed against the new rejection. He can wait for that procedure in the asylum seekers’ center, where he has been for three years. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do in the Netherlands. “I just want to have a quiet life.” He started taking language lessons, but stopped again. Because he doesn’t know if he’ll be here for long.
