An 11-year-old boy who was born in Amsterdam can be deported to Armenia because he does not meet tougher criteria for child refugees, the Council of State ruled on Wednesday.

Mikael, who was set to start in first year at the city’s Cygnus Gymnasium after the summer, won his case in court in 2021 but the justice ministry pressed ahead with its deportation plans, and now the Council of State has ruled in the ministry’s favour.

More than 25,000 people signed a petition calling for the boy to be allowed to stay, and Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema personally telephoned then-junior minister Erik van der Berg, appealing for clemency.

Mikael and his mother live in a refugee centre in Zuidoost district and she has been in the country since 2010. “The IND can as well send me to Ghana,” Mikael told the Parool in June. “I know as much about that country as I do Armenia.”

In 2013, the Dutch government brought in an amnesty for children over the age of five who had spent all or most of their lives in the Netherlands but were living in illegality, following the storm surrounding Mauro Manuel. Manuel was put on a plane by his mother at the age of 10 but was threatened with deportation when he reached 18.

Mikael was not eligible for the amnesty because he was not yet five, and that means he falls under tougher regulations introduced in 2019. In particular, the fact that he and his mother were “out of sight of the authorities” for more than three months, means they are not covered by exceptions to the new rules, the Council of State said.

The court said it understood that it would be “difficult for Mikael” to go to a country he has never lived in and that the stress and uncertainty has been difficult to deal with.

“But that does not mean the court can rule in favour of Mikael,” the ruling said. The situation he finds himself in, the court said, is partly down to his mother’s decision not to take him to Armenia when she was first told to go.

Appeal

According to the Parool, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema will make a last-ditch appeal to new asylum minister Marjolein Faber from the far right PVV. Faber earlier turned down a request for clemency, saying she wanted to await the court judgement, the paper said.

“The desire to reduce the number of migrants in the Netherlands can never be so strong that it is at the cost of an 11-year-old boy who knows no country other than the Netherlands,” the Parool quoted Halsema as saying.

Guy Loyson, a spokesman for the family, told the paper that Mikael and his mother have always been in full view of the authorities. “He has always gone to school,” Loyson said.

The family now plan to take the issue to the European Court of Human Rights.