The unaccompanied minor asylum seekers who were accommodated in a tent in Stadskanaal for two days have been returned to Ter Apel. As a result, 360 children are now staying again, while there is only room for 55.
This is striking, since the judge ruled two weeks ago that from last Friday no more than 55 unaccompanied children are allowed to stay in Ter Apel. At the time of the ruling, there were already about 300 asylum children. This is especially true for adolescent children.
The number staying in Ter Apel has therefore not decreased, but has increased slightly. This is because all places for single children in the country are already full. There is therefore currently no space to transfer the children and also no place to receive them in Ter Apel.
They therefore stay in one of the waiting areas of the application centre. The Ombudsman for Children concluded earlier that the children had to sleep there on chairs or on the floor. There are also no toothbrushes: “They brush their teeth with their fingers,” she wrote in a report.
A spokesperson for the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) told RTV Noord that the number of 360 children ‘is still far above the number we can handle in Ter Apel’. However, a number of children are still being transferred today: ‘Today a start will be made with housing single children in Groesbeek and a location will open in Berkel-Enschot early next week.’
With this, COA expects to house about 50 children at other locations. Taking into account that unaccompanied children will still arrive in Ter Apel during the day, the COA thinks that about 325 asylum children will have to sleep in Ter Apel tonight.
The new reception places in Groesbeek and Berkel-Enschot together offer space for 110 unaccompanied minor asylum seekers. On average, between 100 and 150 new unaccompanied minor foreign nationals come to Ter Apel per week. In short: with these two new shelters, the situation has only improved for a short time.
State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration) therefore made an urgent appeal to municipalities earlier: before the end of this year, 1,700 reception places for unaccompanied asylum children must be added. So 110 of these have been announced at the moment.
The Netherlands Council for Refugees is disappointed that more municipalities have not responded to this call. ‘At the same time, it’s no surprise at all,’ says spokesman Martijn van der Linden. ‘If you have been making non-binding calls for a year and the result is clear, a new call will not give any different results.’
Van der Linden states that the State Secretary still has options to enforce places by means of an emergency law or state emergency law. The spokesperson hopes that before this Saturday evening there will still be municipalities that make reception places available for unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.
COA agrees that finding additional reception places is the only solution. In the meantime, “our people in Ter Apel are doing everything they can to provide shelter and guidance in these difficult circumstances,” said the spokesperson.