No beds in Ter Apel shelter for more than 120 asylum seekers
There is no bed available for more than 120 asylum seekers in the reception center in Ter Apel on Monday evening. “They have to spend the night in the waiting room of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Unfortunately, they have to sleep on a chair there tonight,” says a spokesperson for the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA).
In addition to the regular influx of asylum seekers, it is extra busy in Ter Apel on Monday because the emergency shelters in Breda and Nijmegen are closed. “This resulted in an extra influx of two hundred people,” said the spokesman.
Ter Apel has been struggling with large crowds for quite some time now. As a result, COA often has to find extra places to sleep at the last minute and asylum seekers sometimes sleep on chairs. There is room for 2000 people in Ter Apel. To relieve Ter Apel, the 25 security regions in the Netherlands must realize 150 reception places per region from the middle of this week.