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“More than a prison”: story of a deportation
The main respondent is a man from Algeria who suffered deportation from Netherlands to Algeria in November 2022.
Schipol airport, which serves as the key deportation hub for the Netherlands
He met the authorities in the train that started to ask for the passport, once they noticed he did not have the documents he was brought to the commisary to have an interview. This happened despite the respondent’s ongoing regularisation process in Germany. The respondent was taken to a detention centre, which he spent 5 months and one week in. However, he described that at the beginning he had no idea how long he would stay: “They didn’t tell you. And you can stay 18 months. Up to 18 months”. He described that there were many problems in the detention centre, and that he had no access to the outside world. He described that it felt like ” More than a prison. For nothing. If you don’t have paper you go to prison.” One day he was given a paper on which he found written the date and the time of his scheduled deportation flight. He was deported to Algeria where he was immediately imprisoned, and received a Schengen Entry ban.
