‘If you ask me which asylum cases sometimes really give me a stomachache, it is these files,’ says Joyce, senior employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND). She points to a wall of children’s drawings. On the other side of the room, which looks like a sensory room, is a wide red-colored stage with cuddly bears. In the corner is an empty desk, in the other corner a cupboard with toys. Four cameras hang from the ceiling.
Here unaccompanied minors aged six to twelve, the so-called unaccompanied minors, are interviewed by specialized staff. In the only IND children’s hearing room in the Netherlands, located in a tall building in Den Bosch, employees have the difficult task of questioning and verifying children’s asylum stories.
The employees involved experience these hearings as radical, according to an IND report on the influx of unaccompanied minors, which the service released on Thursday. The relatively young children not only traveled to the Netherlands without parents, but also experienced ‘tough things’ along the way. ‘You have to be able to handle that,’ says Joyce. ‘Especially if you have young children of your own. I once had a boy tell me I looked like his mother and burst into tears. Then I also had to fight against my tears.’
toddler
In addition to the emotional burden, employees have to deal with a significant increase in unaccompanied minor applications this year. Compared to 2020, the number of UMAs applying for asylum in the Netherlands has more than doubled. From 985 respectively in 2020 to 2,191 in 2021. That is almost ten percent of the total number of asylum applications in 2021.
The asylum applications of UMAs in the youngest category have even quadrupled in the past four years. In 2017, 51 children under the age of 12 were heard in this room. In 2021 this involved 199 children. The explosive increase has now forced the Bossche branch to set up a second children’s hearing room.
A peek behind the scenes of the IND is exceptional. Now that the IND is flooded with increasingly complex asylum files and the workload is increasing, the IND wants to show up close what the work entails and what impact it can have on employees. The IND sees the substantial influx of young unaccompanied minors in particular as a ‘very worrying development’. The employees who de Volkskrant to speak, emphasize that they have nothing to hide. But because the work is sometimes sensitive in society, they do not want their last name in the newspaper.
More than half of the UMAs come from Syria, says Joyce. ‘But we also have children from Morocco, Afghanistan and Eritrea, for example. A year ago, the children’s hearing room was used once a week. Today we use this space daily, sometimes twice a day. We had another hearing here this morning.’
The youngest unaccompanied minor foreign national who submitted an asylum application was a child who was one year old at the time. Unaccompanied minors under the age of six may not be heard according to EU guidelines. These children do not automatically receive a residence permit. The IND tries to collect more information about the background of the child through family members, the asylum lawyer and the guardianship institution Nidos.
“We didn’t know where the toddler’s mother was,” says Joyce. ‘Later it became clear that the child had been given by the mother to a people smuggler who pretended to be her mother’, continues tactical manager Yvette. She shakes her head. ‘It’s terrible.’
By sending her child to the Netherlands, the mother hoped to obtain a Dutch residence permit through family reunification. An application by the mother herself would have stood no chance: because she had already applied for asylum in another European country that falls under the Dublin Convention, her right to apply for asylum in the Netherlands lapsed.
Children are often sent ahead with an assignment, according to the IND report, which also includes an exploratory study into the asylum motives of unaccompanied minor aliens. The family reunification is even mentioned by UMAs, especially those from Syria and Iraq, as the main reason for their asylum application.
people smuggler
Applying for asylum in the Netherlands is a conscious choice: the legislation with regard to unaccompanied minors is less strict here, is the idea. For a small part of the unaccompanied minors, the trip to the Netherlands was not their own choice. They were brought here by people smugglers, without knowing where they were going in advance.
‘Migration is big business’, says Yvette. ‘A lot of people get rich from it.’ Yet she does not want to ‘judgment easily’. “What that toddler’s mother has done seems almost unimaginable. But you can also ask yourself how desperate a mother must be if she is able to give her child to a people smuggler.’
Employees regularly see that children are saddled with an enormous responsibility. ‘If their mission doesn’t succeed, they have something to explain to their parents,’ says Yvette. Joyce recalls an audience with a brother and sister, ages 7 and 6. When the parents didn’t get asylum, they tried through their children. ‘I personally really liked that. During the interview, the girl said that her father said: if you succeed, we will move to a bigger house and you will have your own room.’
There is another reason why the increase in unaccompanied minor cases concerns the IND: while the agency is suffering from a staff shortage, asylum applications from minors take more time because of the additional investigations. For example, not all UMAs speak the truth about their age. Further investigation is then necessary to establish that these are not young adults of age. In addition, as a result of a decision by the Council of State, employees recently had to investigate adequate reception in the country of origin from the start of the procedure in the event that an application is rejected.
In order to shape the hearings for children, the IND has worked closely with the Dutch vice squad, which has extensive experience with hearing very young children. Stricter rules therefore apply to a child interview: an employee must follow additional training and an interview may last a maximum of two hours. In addition, the employee is not allowed to type a report during the conversation. This only happens afterwards, on the basis of the recordings made by the four cameras.
How do you ask a 6 year old child with a language barrier? ‘With an interpreter, of course, and sometimes with hands and feet,’ says Joyce, who has the necessary experience with hearing children. ‘Sometimes we show a puppet and ask if the child recognizes a certain uniform. But first we need to create a safe and relaxed atmosphere. Then they run through the room here or let’s make a drawing.’ She points to the wall of drawings again—this time with a smile. ‘No drawings of war situations, mind you. Lots of coloring pages of football heroes and princesses.’