deportation

The Netherlands is still locking child asylum seekers up in detention centers, according to research by UNICEF. Last year the Netherlands held 210 children in detention centers, some of them for up to 82 days. 900 children who applied for asylum in the Netherlands were sent back to their country of origin or another European Union country last year, RTL Nieuws reports.

Natig Isbatov, a 32-year-old asylum seeker from Azerbaijan who the Netherlands deported earlier this month, is being persecuted in his home country for political reasons, human rights organization Amnesty International and refugee organization VluchtelingenWerk Nederland said to NRC.

The mother of Lili and Howick, two child asylum seekers from Armenia who were given permission to stay in the Netherlands last year after a storm of commotion around their intended deportation, received permission to return to the Netherlands. She will be likely be reunited with her children by early next month, Patricia Scholtes, the lawyer representing the family, confirmed to NU.nl after reports by RTL Nieuws.

Journalist Ans Boersma knew that her ex-boyfriend Abd A. belonged to al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group Jabat Al Nustra. Tapped conversations show that he told her, the Public Prosecutor said in a pro-forma hearing against the man, ANP reports.

The 33-year-old man from Syria is suspected of participating in a terrorist organization, and involvement in attacks in Syria with many fatalities.

The man convicted of murdering 96-year-old 'oma Toni' in Amsterdam's De Pijp in 2015, is now fighting his deportation to his home country of Iraq.  After his conviction, the Dutch immigration and naturalization service IND revoked his residency permit, NOS reports.

On Saturday coalition party CDA announced that the party wants to extend the children's pardon, joining the D66 and ChristenUnie who have been calling for this for some time. The VVD is now the only one of the four coalition parties who wants to stick to the agreement made in the Rutte III coalition agreement, which states that the previous government's children's pardon will remain unchanged, the Volkskrant reports.

Turkey deported Financieele Dagblad correspondent Ans Boersma on Thursday. According to the newspaper, the Turkish authorities gave no official explanation for the deportation, only saying the journalist had to leave for "safety-related reasons". 

The 31-year-old journalist received her Turkish press card for the year last week, according to the newspaper. She arrived in Istanbul on Wednesday morning, and went to the immigration service to extend her residency permit. At the police station she was told that she was to be deported. 

VVD party leader Klaas Dijkhoff is facing furious reactions on the way he responded to a 9-year-old boy telling him how afraid he was to be deported to Iraq. When the child told him that he thinks death waits in Iraq, the Liberal parliamentarian said: "Yes, well", RTL Nieuws reports.

State Secretary Mark Harbers of Justice and Security received such serious threats regarding the deportation of two Armenian children, that he had to go into hiding last week, sources in The Hague told the Telegraaf.

An Armenian mother was deported from the Netherlands on Monday without her children Howick (12) and Lily (11). The family lived in the Netherlands for nine years. According to children's rights organization Defense for Children, this is the first time ever that a mother was deported without her kids. "Horrible", the organization said, according to RTL Nieuws.

Over the first five moths of this year the Ministry of Security and Justice deported 480 migrants who were convicted of a crime. Among them were 60 Albanians, 60 Surinamese, 50 Algerians and 50 Moroccans, a spokesperson for the ministry confirmed to NU.nl after reports in AD.

The Ministry's figures show that the proportion of criminal migrants that were forced to leave the Netherlands increased every year since 2011. In that year 72 percent of this group were deported, now it is 80 percent.