Ministry must reassess asylum even after fraud, court rules

The government may strip asylum seekers of their residence permits if it emerges they invented their reasons for seeking protection, the Council of State has ruled – but it must first check properly whether they are entitled to stay on other grounds.

The country’s highest administrative court was ruling in two cases that grew out of the work of a legal adviser who, prosecutors said, sold made-up asylum stories to his clients and coached them to recite invented accounts of persecution to win the right to stay. He was jailed for four years for people smuggling in December 2023.

His conviction prompted the immigration service IND to reopen more than 100 permits it had granted to his clients, in an investigation known as the Ambrose project.

Two Iranian families
Among the reopened files were two Iranian families granted asylum in 2017, on the grounds that they would be at risk in Iran for having turned away from Islam. After the review the ministry concluded they had given false statements, and cancelled their permits. Both families deny this and stand by their original accounts.

The Council of State said the permits had rightly been withdrawn once the ministry established that false statements had been made. But it said the government must then always carry out a proper reassessment of whether a family still qualifies for asylum – even if they maintain the original story.

Different outcomes
The court split on that point. In one case it found the reassessment had been done carefully and said the refusal of asylum could stand. In the other it ruled the family had not been questioned on all the relevant parts of their account, and ordered the ministry to hear them again and take a fresh decision.

The rulings come as asylum minister Bart van den Brink presses ahead with measures to speed up deportations, having separately pressed councils to open more reception places to ease overcrowding.