Deporting foreigners: ‘easier said than done’

Simone Steendijk also saw Wilders’ call. “Apprehension and deportation!”, the PVV leader wrote in capital letters on X in February, after groups of Eritreans clashed in The Hague. “Easy to say, I thought,” she says with a shrug. “You can very quickly say that people should be sent back. But the reality is extremely complicated. Those Eritrean rioters will not be sent back at this time, no.”

Simone Steendijk took over as director of the Repatriation & Departure Service (DT&V) a year ago: the government service that ensures that foreigners who do not have the right to stay leave. She came from the Hollandse Delta water board. It became immediately clear when she started that this is a different kind of job. “My home had to be scanned for security risks. Luckily I already had dogs and a fence around my house. So everything was good.”

The conversation is in her office, at the top of a tower in The Hague, where she shares the floor with the management of asylum organizations COA and IND. In the hall there are colorful souvenirs from all over the world, arranged in glass display cabinets. Steendijk’s shiny white desk is empty. “I don’t like frills,” she says.

You’ve been here for a year now. How do you think things are going?

“We are realizing substantially more returns than before. More than ten thousand people left last year. The share of people who left through us has increased, while fewer people disappeared with an unknown destination. A favorable development, because then you know for sure that people have actually left for their country of origin.”

This mainly concerns people who want to return themselves, on a voluntary basis. According to your annual report, the forced deportation of people remains very difficult. Nearly a third of the people the DT&V wants to deport disappear before the time comes. How did that happen?

“We invite foreigners who have been rejected for an interview. In it we say: ‘We want to guide you towards a voluntary departure, but if you do not cooperate, we can also force you.’ We see that people run away as soon as they sense that they are going to be taken to immigration detention. Sometimes literally. Then they see the van driving up, they grab their bag and walk away from the asylum seeker center.”

Why does the DT&V allow that to happen? Can’t take them with you?

“No. We are not allowed to simply enter someone’s room, authorization is required for this. Then you should accidentally find them outside their room at the asylum seeker center. But even then, there are plenty of reasons why a forced deportation is not possible.”

Steendijk puts a piece of paper on the table, an illustration with four traffic lights. “This is the core of the problem,” she says. “In order to deport someone, these four lights must be green. A person must be available, able to be placed in custody, have a valid travel document, and be legally deportable. In practice, one or more lights are often on red. That is why we are committed to voluntary departure.”

The legal traffic light in particular is sometimes red. Steendijk: “If your application for residence is rejected, you will receive a return decision. You can appeal against that. And if that is rejected, you can apply again. You see people making requests again and again. Seventy percent of the people we qualify with submit a residence application twice or more. This way they can extend their stay for a long time, which makes their return more difficult.”

We read in your annual report that relatively many people are ultimately allowed to stay after new applications. Stretching seems useful.

“There can be all kinds of reasons why people are allowed to stay in a second instance. Situations change. For example, the area where someone comes from can suddenly be declared unsafe. So yes, there are reasons to stretch. People didn’t travel all the way here just to return by return mail to the country they came from.”

Imagine: the Wilders I cabinet is on the steps. It wants to deport more asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies and asks you what this would require. What’s first on your wish list?

“Limiting those stacked applications. That would help us the most. If someone suddenly says on the third application that he or she is LGBTI, you may wonder: why was this not revealed on the first application? And the IND has to assess it again and again.”

What do you want to do about it?

“A financial incentive could be built in. That you have to pay a high amount for submitting a repeat application. Or that there will be a limit on the number of procedures you can perform. We hear from other European return services that this works. In France, for example, you are only allowed to have a procedure twice. And in Switzerland there is a limit to the compensation for legal support that you are entitled to. In this way you could limit the possibilities for endlessly stacking requests. But that is a choice for politicians.”

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Morocco has been taking back its nationals since last year. But in return, the Netherlands is not allowed to publicly criticize the human rights situation there.

“I don’t recognize that. When we enter into a partnership, we look at a broad palette. What you can do economically, for example, to train people in such a country. And that has led to results. We forcibly deported 170 Moroccans last year, much more than in all previous years. In Algeria we are now also seeing a cautious opening. It is still early, but we have already sent back some Algerians.”

What agreements have been made with Algeria?

“It is still too early to say anything about that, we have been in continuous discussions. A conversation recently took place with the Algerian ambassador.”

But according to the government, Algeria is an unsafe country, right?

“When Algeria was no longer on the list of safe countries, it became reluctant to take back nationals. And yet we just kept calling Algeria to say: yes, we have a number of people here that we would like to send back. That has now been achieved.”

New agreements have also recently been made with Morocco to facilitate return, says Steendijk. Many Moroccans who have exhausted all legal remedies refuse to cooperate with their identification, which means they cannot be deported. For example, they did not want to get into the van to the Moroccan consulate, where their identity had to be established. It has now been agreed with Morocco that the Netherlands’ provision of a fingerprint and photo is sufficient for confirmation of identity and the issuance of a replacement travel document, so that they can suddenly be deported.

That’s how Steendijk likes to see it: that despite all the obstacles, her organization still manages to find ways to deport people. She calls it coming up with a “workaround”. “Our people are extremely inventive.”

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