Asylum min. announces trials restrict the freedom of asylum seekers causing nuisance

Asylum minister Marjolein Faber is going to trial issuing area bans to asylum seekers who are creating a nuisance at the registration center in Ter Apel if other measures prove unsuccessful. These asylum seekers would then be brought to a strict shelter location, which is also called a process availability location (pbl). They would only be allowed to stay in or around the asylum seekers' center and would not be allowed to go into the residential area or village center of Ter Apel or Nieuw-Weerdinge.

The PVV minister wants to use this to breathe new life into the pbl trial. Her predecessor, Eric van der Burg, had started this but was forced to quit the trial after a court verdict. The court ruled that an asylum seeker was too limited in their freedom with this measure.

Faber is expecting to begin the trial in June. She is expected to have a maximum of 10 spots for nuisance creating asylum seekers. They will be given a freedom restricting measure that applies to the whole day.

If these asylum seekers are seen in the areas of Ter Apel or Nieuw-Weerdinge, where they are banned from, then they could end up in a police cell.

This trial will be a part of a larger plan that the minister announced in February. It will be geared towards asylum seekers that are causing nuisance while having very little chance of being successful in their application for asylum.

At first, the asylum seekers in question will only have to report themselves twice a day. But if the issues continue, then they will be put in increasingly strict regimes with more authorities.

A placement in a pbl is the third step in this plan of approach. This shelter location is meant for asylum seekers that have been caught causing "lighter" forms of nuisance on several occasions, like shoplifting for example. The last and fourth step is that the asylum seeker ends up in prison, after the person in question has been convicted of crime.

A majority of the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, has requested to Faber that she open a pbl. The minister is implementing this trial to adhere to the requests. The trial may be "expanded or sharpened where possible."

The minister believes that this new approach will hold up in court because any tightening of the regime will be motivated as to why it applies to someone.