Prison of papers: As Netherlands ramps up detentions, undocumented immigrants speak out
- Written by Riccardo Biggi
- Illustrated by B. Carrot
Despite a reputation for elevating human rights, the Dutch migrant detention system forces people into prison-like conditions without the right to work, study, or even know their release date. These environments breed isolation, mental health crises, and violence. And despite the government’s commitment to expel undocumented people, only half of deportations succeed.
“When the police asked for my documents for the fourth time, I told them: are you not tired of bringing me in?” says Omar* with a dry smile. A tall, charismatic man, Omar has lived undocumented in the Netherlands for 23 years.
He’s spent nearly two of those years in migrant detention centers: “It’s just like a prison, but worse,” he says. “You don’t know when you’ll be out. You can’t do anything all day. You don’t even have your personal room. You feel crushed.”
Omar is not alone. People from all walks of life can be held in a migrant detention center for being undocumented, that is, without the right to stay in the Netherlands on paper. People with stable jobs and families in the Netherlands, people who have suffered traumas and survived torture, people with no prospects of returning to their countries, and even children.
Omar has lived undocumented in Amsterdam for 23 years. He was locked in detention three times in the Netherlands, for a total of almost 20 months.
Much about the Dutch migrant detention system is unknown. Journalists are barred from entering detention centers. And despite the Netherlands’ reputation for tolerance and human rights, nervous and fearful looks arise whenever detention centers are mentioned within the undocumented community in Amsterdam.
Conditions in these centers have faced widespread criticism from human rights organizations, the EU and international bodies. In 2013, the suicide of a Russian man in detention named Alexander Dolmatov brought the issue to public attention and triggered the Dutch government to promise reforms. Yet, progress remains limited.
To shed light on this underreported subject, I interviewed migrant detainees, lawyers, NGO workers, the police, and activists, and exchanged emails with Rotterdam Detention Center. I used publicly available data, and requested information from DTenV, the Dutch authority tasked with executing detention and deportation, for data from the period from 1st January 2023 to 30th November 2023-24.
This article brings detention centers into focus at a time when politicians are proposing even stricter measures against migrants, an increase in deportations and diminishing alternatives for undocumented people. But with mounting evidence of inhumane treatment and systemic failures, this prompts a critical question: do detention and deportation only exacerbate the problem of irregular migration?
Detained, but not a criminal
Omar’s* journey started far away, on the fringes of the Sahara desert. His father, realizing his son had no future in a country stricken by terrorism and famine, sent him to Europe when he was a young boy. After crossing the desert and the sea, he finally reached the Netherlands, where he applied for asylum. His application was refused because he had no documents proving his identity.
When he turned 18, police ordered Omar to leave the country. “But how could I leave?” he recalls: “My father sacrificed everything for me to come here.”
Apprehended without a regular residency permit, he was sent to a detention center.
Omar’s story is far from unique. Across the EU, an estimated 100.000 people are detained each year for migration-related reasons. In the Netherlands alone, nearly 3,700 people were detained last year for not having residency permits.
When Omar’s asylum request was rejected, he became homeless. For years, he has been surviving with increasing difficulties, avoiding the police and finding ways to sustain himself.
Migration detention occupies an ambiguous area of law: illegal residence does not fall under strafrecht, criminal law. It is a minor offence and detention is meant as a simple administrative procedure. Not having a residency permit is not a crime by itself: the punishable offense is refusing to leave the country if one is apprehended by the police while undocumented.
Dutch governments have been trying for years to make irregular residence a crime, without success and despite opposition from institutional advice.
“The purpose of immigration detention is to ensure that people with no right to remain in the Netherlands are available for deportation. How this should be done has been a matter of debate for some years,” reads the 2020 Dutch Ombudsman report on migrant detention.
Despite the government’s pledge to use detention as a last resort, people often stay in custody for an average of 5 weeks.
“After the fourth month, you start feeling the concrete heavy on your head,” explains Omar, recalling his periods of confinement. “That’s when the officers start coming to you, proposing that you collaborate to go back to your country.”
Migration detainees are not in prison because they committed crimes. The Ombudsman concludes: “People are kept in detention but are not criminals.”
Migration detention occupies an ambiguous area of law: illegal residence does not fall under strafrecht, criminal law. It is a minor offence and detention is meant as a simple administrative procedure.
Omar: discrimination and arbitrary detention
To this day, Omar has not been able to obtain a residency permit. He works irregular jobs and stays with friends in Amsterdam. In his free time, he acts in a community theatre. I met him at his house, thanks to a common friend who was also in detention for months.
Despite his efforts to build a life in the Netherlands, Omar has been confined in migrant detention four times. With a bitter smile, he recalls one of these instances.
“I was the only African person in a small village, walking by night to the train station,” he recalls. “When the police saw me, they thought, ‘What is this black man doing here?’ Instead of helping me, they took me to prison.”
Like Omar, many black or dark-skinned foreigners are stopped by the police for no other apparent reason than their race, as shown by Dutch NGOs. It is illegal—police officers can only check documents with a reason, like small infractions such as forgetting bicycle lights. But these minor offenses are often used as a pretext for discriminatory policing.
Young men from Africa or the Middle East are the main targets of these checks, which NGOs have denounced as racial profiling. “The police will always find a way to ask for documents from people who they think are acting suspiciously,” explains an Amsterdam-based human rights lawyer. “As soon as you are dark-skinned, it’s a different story. For undocumented people, any police control can end in detention.”
Legally, foreigners in the Netherlands can only be detained under two conditions: if there is a tangible prospect of deportation, or if there is a suspicion that they may evade police control. “But the police can always find a way to justify a detention decision,” explains the lawyer, requesting anonymity to protect his work.
“As a lawyer, I say that detention centres are not humane,” the lawyer concludes. “In other countries the police don’t throw people in prison just because they don’t have documents. They are working and contributing to society.”
Kamal: dealing with trauma behind closed bars
“When they put me in detention, there was no screening to assess whether I was in good mental condition to handle confinement. I asked for a psychiatrist but the waiting list was too long. Inside, my condition quickly got worse.”
Its Saturday morning in Dam Square, Amsterdam. Kamal*, an LGBTQ asylum seeker, joins a rally for migrants’ rights. With a rainbow flag over his shoulders, he moves through the crowd, smiling warmly and greeting friends. In his hands, a banner reads, “No one is illegal”.
Kamal is an activist with Amsterdam City Rights, a group of undocumented people who defend migrants’ rights. He is also a long-distance runner who spent five months confined in a 2×5 meter room at the Rotterdam Detention Center, where taking even a few steps was impossible.
Ten years ago, Kamal fled his home country, where his brother had been killed and he faced constant threats due to his sexual orientation. He arrived in the Netherlands on a visa for the 2014 Amsterdam Marathon, but his renewal application was denied. This left him undocumented and homeless. Haunted by trauma, he twice attempted suicide.
Kamal and many other people in detention are survivors of violence, persecution or war, who apply for asylum in the Netherlands, where they expect to find safety.
After police apprehended him in 2018, he was taken into custody. As a law student, Kamal was surprised to find himself in what he calls the “prison of papers” in the Netherlands, where freedom is enshrined in the first article of the constitution.
“When they put me in detention, there was no screening to assess whether I was in good mental condition to handle confinement. I asked for a psychiatrist but the waiting list was too long. Inside, my condition quickly got worse.”
Two years after Kamal’s release from detention, his intake form at a homeless shelter in Amsterdam still mentions “suicidal thoughts”. He had not recovered from his trauma, and confinement only made it worse.
Today, though he’s safe from detention while authorities process his asylum application, the fear of prison still haunts him. During his recovery from depression, he found a life partner and remains actively engaged in sports and activism. Despite awaiting a decision on his asylum application, the Netherlands has become his home.
Salim: from suicide to isolation
“If they didn’t let me out, I would have killed myself,” Salim* cries, with a frantic look in his eyes. A few days after his release from the Rotterdam Detention Center, his neck, belly and arms are marked by self-inflicted cuts.
Salim told me that police stopped him after jumping in a canal to save a man’s life in Maastricht. Without proper documents, he was locked in a prison, where he attempted to take his own life away.
After half a year in the Rotterdam Detention Center, his mental state crumbled on 1st October 2024. Usually, if there is no prospect of deportation after six months, detainees are released, but Salim could not bear it anymore. “I didn’t understand why they were keeping me in prison. I will make a big scandal out of this!” he shouts.
His story is not an isolated one. Volunteers who visit detainees in the detention center report that no one inside is immune to mental health issues. Paranoia is ever-present, and during interviews, detainees even unplug phone cables, fearing they might be overheard.
The detention environment, added to past traumas, often triggers aggressive behavior in detention. Kamal himself recalls a friend who shared a cell with a man with psychosis, who bit part of his ear off during an episode.
Saied: psychological pressures and “voluntary” returns
Inside detention centers, detainees spend their days in idleness and uncertainty. Unlike in prison, they are not allowed to work or enroll in study programs. Until the day of release or deportation, they do not know if or when they will be free.
The Dutch Readmission and Return Service (DTenV), tasked with managing deportations, claims its goal is to “motivate foreign nationals who must leave the Netherlands.” More than half of all returns are classified as “voluntary,” often facilitated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“There is no such thing as a voluntary return,” says Saied*, who endured this reality for over a year. I met him at his workplace, a shelter for undocumented people in Amsterdam. “When you’re inside, DTenV’s puts a huge psychological pressure on you,” he continued. Trapped in detention with no alternatives, voluntary return can feel like the only escape.
DTenV did not reply to request for comment, while IOM stated that they are “not involved in forced returns in any way,” disregarding allegations of facilitating returns that are not genuinely voluntary.
For 13 months, Saied says, DTenV tried to convince him to go back to his home country: “Everytime I met with them, I showed them evidence of why I wasn’t safe there. But they insisted. They told me it was impossible to get a residency permit here. Meanwhile, I was spending my days in a cell.”
Seven years later, despite coming from a designated “safe country,” Saied obtained refugee status. His story was published in a graphic novel, “Alles Dagen Ui”.
Even after release and obtaining residency, detention continues to have ramifications on Saied’s mental health. “It made me sick and tired,” he says.
Resistance against forced returns
In 2024, more than three out of four people in migration detention were expelled from the Netherlands according to DTenV, whether voluntarily or forcibly. Deportations add to the detainees’ traumas, but there are ways to resist.
Once on a deportation flight, detainees can occasionally count on solidarity from other passengers. Roos, the director of Migreat—an NGO supporting detainees facing deportation—explains that a plane cannot take off if passengers refuse to sit. If enough passengers protest, the pilot may expel the detainee to avoid losing further time.
However, the police often resort to force, restraining the individual and pushing them into their seat. The pilot may also send out passengers who stand up in solidarity, for causing public disturbance. Roos adds, “Only in the event of a medical emergency must the police call an ambulance, halting the deportation.”
This is what happened to Joost*, who fled the Syrian war. Due to the Dublin Regulation, Bulgaria was responsible for his asylum application, since he had left his fingerprints there.
Like Joost, approximately 72% of all people who were forcibly deported (either from detention or from outside) in 2023-2024, were returned to another European country.
Unexpectedly, the police came to “pick him up” directly in the asylum camp where he was living in Vlissingen. “At six in the morning, the police entered my room without earlier notice. I knew that if I resisted, they would have beaten me.”
After a few days in detention, just the time necessary to organize his deportation flight to Bulgaria, Joost boarded the plane. “When I realized that they were going to deport me back to Bulgaria I was terrified. I knew that from Bulgaria, the police could send me back to Turkey, and from Turkey to Syria. From Syria, the next stop is death,” he recalls. What happened next was documented by the NGO Migreat.
As the plane prepared for takeoff, Joost began shouting and struggling to free himself. “The police pushed me down, closed my mouth, and I couldn’t breathe,” Joost remembers. “There was a doctor working with them, but he just stood there, silent. How can a doctor do that?”
Joost eventually lost consciousness from lack of air and had to be removed from the plane by ambulance. The flight left without him. Today, Joost lives near Amsterdam, waiting for a decision on his asylum application.
The failures of deportations
Total deportation rates remain low. Reviewing returns documented by DTenV from January 2023 to September 2024, including those happening without detention, the percentage of executed returns lowers down to 53%, only half of whom were forcibly deported. The remaining 9290 undocumented people of which DTenV are aware presumably continue to live in the Netherlands.
Revijara Oostenhuis from the Meldpunt Vreemdelingendetentie, an NGO with a hotline supporting people in migrant detention in the Netherlands, explains why deportations are difficult to execute: “Successful returns require many factors: agreements with countries of origin, and many countries do not want to take their citizens back. It is not easy.”
Even when readmission agreements exist, they are always unstable. Embassies must provide a laissez-passer, temporary passport issued by a country’s authorities to facilitate the return of its nationals, yet countries of origin do not always cooperate.
Omar had no documents, and for this reason, he was rejected as an asylum seeker. But for the same reason, Dutch authorities could not bring him back to his country.
Algeria and Morocco, two of the most represented nationalities in detention, are a perfect example. While Algeria only issued four laissez-passer in 2023, despite 141 requests, Morocco, with which a successful deportation agreement had been implemented, has partially stopped collaborating with laissez-passer.
Deportations can also be stalled by the detainee’s lack of documentation. When individuals are unable to provide passports, birth certificates, or other identification, authorities may view this as non-cooperation. “Even when people genuinely do not have documents, lacking passports or birth certificates could be interpreted as deliberate resistance to deportation” explains Revijara. “DTenV is allowed to extend the detention period based on such claims of non-cooperation.”
Detain or Deport
“To all asylum seekers who are here now, I say: either you go back, or we will detain you. It is detain or deport,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV (Partij van de Vrijheid), in 2021. Two years later, Wilders’ stance on immigration helped earn him the highest percentage of votes in the 2023 elections.
On September 13th, 2024, Minister for Asylum and Migration Marjolein Faber promised to introduce the “strictest asylum regime ever”, including forced return of individuals without a residency permit. In reality, the government is not offering anything new. Migrant detention in the Netherlands, established in 2000, had already been part of election campaigns in 2011, when Mark Rutte became president as leader of the Center-Right VVD Party.
“It’s just a theatre play for voters,” says Revijara from the Meldpunt Vreemdelingendetentie. These policies allow politicians to project a tough stance on immigration, regardless of their practical outcomes or human cost.
In fact, taking Wilders’ pledges literally would demand an exorbitant increase in funding, because detention costs are almost 6 times higher than those for asylum shelters, at €455 per bed per day. If the government wanted to deport all undocumented people— estimated at 60,000—it would require around twenty-seven million euros annually. This figure does not account for the costs of building new facilities, hiring additional officers, lawyers’ costs, medical care or funding deportation flights.
Undocumented people, between the government’s crackdown and civil society’s support
There are more than 250 official migrant prisons in Europe, and hundreds of other non-official closed centers. According to JRS Europe, across the EU, detention conditions “violate people’s dignity and hamper access to fundamental rights.”
Despite evidence of the human toll in detention and the inefficiency of returns, politicians push to increase deportations. Italy’s illegal and expensive agreement to send asylum seekers from safe countries to Albania is just another example.
Return of non-EU citizens is also a key element of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, approved in April 2024. Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, expresses the fear that the Pact’s focus on accelerated procedures for people from countries listed as “safe” will “almost certainly cause more people to be put into de facto detention at EU borders.”
As the Dutch government doubles down on detention, it also reduces funding to shelters for undocumented people, leaving vulnerable people with no alternative but the streets. This is where local institutions, municipalities and civil society step in.
The City of Amsterdam, for instance, has protested these cuts. A police officer in Amsterdam Oost states bluntly in a confidential communication: “More people will be homeless. It is not our task to find undocumented people and put them in prison.”
There are tangible alternatives to limit the negative effects of detention and truly use it as a last resort. Amnesty International, for instance, proposed using open shelters and developing integration programs, as well as improving pre-entry screening to avoid detaining vulnerable people and those who cannot be immediately deported. Ideally, regularizing undocumented people could be the goal for a society that strives for equality and solidarity.
Civil society is stepping in to address the gaps left by harmful policies. “There is greater public awareness about the rights of undocumented individuals,” says Rian from LOS, a national organisation supporting people without papers. “Support for undocumented people has become more mainstream.”
*Names have been changed to protect sources.
About the author
Riccardo Biggi is a researcher and journalist who works as media producer for Here to Support, an Amsterdam-based organization that aims at supporting undocumented people to be visible and resilient.
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