The leaders of seven opposition parties, including D66, the SP and the GroenLinks PvdA alliance, have called on refugee minister Marjolein Faber not to deport an 11-year-old boy to Armenia, where he has never been.

Mikael was born and brought up in the Netherlands and is due to start secondary school this month. However, both the minister and immigration department IND are pressing ahead with plans to send him to the country his mother left 14 years ago.

“The fact that our immigration rules can allow this to happen, show these rules need changing,” the party leaders say in a public appeal in the Volkskrant.  “Minister Faber says she can do nothing to prevent the deportation, but experts see things differently.”

The minister’s right of discretion in complicated cases was removed when the amnesty for child refugees was abolished in 2019. However, the law does still give her the right to allow people to stay “if someone’s personal situation demands it,” Carolus Grutters, a migration law expert at Radboud University in Nijmegen told the paper.

The party leaders have also submitted questions to both Faber and prime minister Dick Schoof, a former head of the IND.

Faber has said Mikael’s mother is to blame for the boy’s predicament, saying she should have left the country years ago.

Some 87,000 people have signed a petition calling the government to rethink the decision to deport Mikael.

Refugees

The minister, who represents the far-right PVV, has also said the Netherlands is a “Valhalla” for refugees, backing comments made online by party leader Geert Wilders.

While refugees legally in the Netherlands will be treated “just like any Dutch person”, she also plans to cut spending on support for asylum seekers, Faber told the Telegraaf. “We are going to make everything as basic as possible,” she said.