Immigration minister Gerd Leers is considering giving local mayors powers to determine the results of a small number of controversial asylum requests, he told a television talk show.

‘It is an early thought and needs working out politically,’ Leers said on the Pauw & Witteman show. ‘But it is a cautious attempt to allow mayors to deal with the situation themselves.’
Mayors, including Leers when he was mayor of Maastricht, occasionally write to ministers urging them to reconsider decisions to deport asylum seekers who live within their town boundaries.
These are usually people who have lived in the country for years and are ‘fully integrated’, the Volkskrant said.