Category: Migration policy

A reminder to hosts and visitors of the closed centre: When peopole who are undocumented or in exile disappear or are arrested during one of several raids, it takes 24 to 48 hours to know whether the Immigration office has … Continuer la lecture →

Update 10/10/2018 Mr Gebre Mariam, who committed suicide at the Vottem closed centre on 9 October 2018 had obtained asylum in Bulgaria. He had been threatened with an axe there and absolutely didn’t want to go back to that country. … Continuer la lecture →

The Office is filling hundreds of places in our camps called closed centres; places that had been made available on the occasion of the raids announced at the North Station and in Parc Maximilien. After the mobilisation of the platform … Continuer la lecture →

The administrative detention of migrants (foreigners without residence permits considered as valid) entered into force in 1988 in Belgium. Since then, the multiplication of this type of space is more than obvious at the border because in 1988 there were … Continuer la lecture →

14/01/2018: It seems that the federal police have launched a migrants’ hunting in the whole country, determined to ‘clean’ all the country: arrests in the stations, parkings and trains the last days. Many hosts are calling us to report missing … Continuer la lecture →

The fast intervention team of the Office des étrangers at work On the 25th of December 2017 around noon : a host brings back two migrants to Brussels. The federal police holds an alcohol control on the highway E40 at … Continuer la lecture →

03/10/2017 Every day, families are being broken by the Foreigners Office that retains fathers and mothers, separating them form their children, sometimes newborns, and does not hestitate to deport the parent to the “country of origin”, on the pretext of … Continuer la lecture →

Update 17/09/2017: The people who were arrested daily over the last weeks by the police in Maximilien parc, its surroundings and in the North Station are still many to be retained in closed centres. It remains very complicated to spot … Continuer la lecture →

05/08/2017: Francken discovered two countries he didn’t know: Sudan and Somalia. Since almost a year, migrants – mainly Sudanese and Eritreans, have been sleeping in the Maximilien Parc in Brussels. Associations and volunteers try to provide them with food and … Continuer la lecture →

05/08/2017: Mid May 2017 the Council of Ministers have approved a masterplan “Detention centres for illegal residents”. The masterplan provides a big extension of the existing return capacity and the creation of three new dentention centres. “With this masterplan we … Continuer la lecture →