Netherlands deporting rejected asylum seekers to Morocco for first time in years

After years of Morocco refusing to take back asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies in the Netherlands, that cooperation is now back on track and “almost ideal,” State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) told De Telegraaf. Moroccan people in asylum detention because their applications were rejected are now deported within a few weeks.

In the first eleven months of 2023, the Netherlands deported 250 Moroccan asylum seekers who had failed all legal remedies to Morocco. That is the highest number in ten years, according to the Return and Departure Service. Another 700 Moroccans will return to their home country in the coming six months. Last year, about 1,000 people from Morocco applied for asylum in the Netherlands.

Morocco stopped accepting citizens whose asylum applications were rejected after the Netherlands criticized the country’s suppression of the protest movement in the Rif Mountains. In recent years, the Dutch government invested a lot in improving the relationship between the two countries. The Cabinet agreed to speak out less about internal affairs in Morocco, and Van der Burg managed to make agreements with the Moroccan Minister of Interior last year about deporting asylum seekers who had exhausted all legal remedies.

Despite these successes, Van der Burg sees a new problem arising. According to him, asylum seekers from Morocco are adapting to the stricter policy. They often don’t wait for their application to be rejected but disappear to live undocumented in the Netherlands while the asylum process is still ongoing. “They know perfectly well that they are not allowed to stay and that if they are rejected, they will be put in immigration detention,” he told the newspaper. “That’s our problem now.”