Dutch asylum blacklist doubled in 2 years to nearly 1,200 people
The number of asylum seekers on the government’s blacklist for problem causers and crime suspects has doubled in the past year. In 2023, there were 576 people on this “top X list.” At the start of 2025, there were 1,180, De Telegraaf reported based on figures from the Ministry of Asylum and Migration.
The top X list is an overview of “the most serious group of nuisance-causing and/or criminal asylum seekers,” according to the Ministry. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) compiles the list with the police.
Over 60 percent of the asylum seekers on the list were placed there by the COA for causing incidents in asylum centers, ranging from rule violations to violence. The police added the rest. 17 percent of the people on the top X list are repeat offenders, and another 17 percent are suspects of a crime “with major impact.” An asylum seeker can fall under both police groups. 41 percent of notorious troublemakers are children under the age of 18.
A possible explanation for the expanding list of troublemakers is that the asylum shelters in the Netherlands are all crowded, Asylum Minister Marjolein Faber told the Telegraaf. Asylum applications are also taking longer to process, so asylum seekers are stuck in uncertainty in the overcrowded accommodations for longer.
The COA and police have a whole range of options for tackling troublemakers, from obliging them to check in at certain times each day to fines, restraining orders, or alcohol bans. The COA can also transfer someone who is causing trouble to another location.
“First of all: disruptive behavior is unacceptable, and this Cabinet is firmly committed to intensifying the approach to disruptive asylum seekers,” Faber told the Telegraaf. The government wants to do more to stop nuisance-causing and criminal asylum seekers but is running up against the limits of European regulations, the newspaper wrote. Nuisance causing cannot be used as a criteria to refuse asylum, Faber wrote in a recent letter to parliament.
