German federal police were filmed quietly dropping off a migrant in the Dutch city of Venlo in the early hours of the morning in what appears to be a cross-border expulsion carried out without the knowledge of local Dutch authorities.
The incident, which took place in May, came to light after local florist Masha Verstappen’s security camera captured the scene, and she later shared her concerns publicly.
The footage shows a police van arriving at around 4:00 a.m., parking briefly as a man is handed a suitcase and a large brown envelope, then left behind as the vehicle drives away. “He sat outside for a few more hours and used my power to charge his phone,” she told Dutch outlet L1 Nieuws. “We are less than 100 meters from the border here.”
German police officers have been caught on camera crossing the Dutch border to drop off migrants.
CCTV footage from a florist in Venlo recorded the moment a man was left at 4 a.m. with his suitcase and a brown envelope in the Dutch city, just 4 miles from Germany.
The… pic.twitter.com/oPpfsLFGgl
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The Dutch Ministry of Asylum and Migration confirmed to L1 Nieuws it was aware of such incidents and admitted they have been occurring for years. A spokesperson said there are two types of transfers of foreign nationals between Germany and the Netherlands: so-called “hot transfers,” where a migrant is physically handed over between authorities, and “cold transfers,” in which no coordination takes place. The May incident is categorized as a cold transfer.
The ministry defended the legality of the practice, stating that such returns are not classified as illegal “pushback” because they occur within the Schengen Area, not at an external European border.
This assessment, however, is a moot point. There have been multiple instances in which courts have intervened to rule the return of migrants from one EU country to another to be unlawful, including between Germany and Poland.
A German judge ruled in early June that such expulsions are unlawful, affirming that all individuals have the right to a fair asylum procedure. The Bundespolizei, however, maintains that it is acting within its rights.
That particular case concerned three Somali nationals who had arrived in Frankfurt (Oder) on May 9 by train, only to be removed back to Poland by the German authorities despite having declared their intention to seek asylum.
The Berlin Administrative Court ruled the German government could not bypass the Dublin Regulation by invoking emergency clauses under the EU treaties where there was “a lack of sufficient demonstration of a danger to public safety or order.”
The drop-off in Venlo appears to be a byproduct of increased German border checks under the new CDU-led federal government. When those individuals are believed to have come from the Netherlands, they are sometimes returned without formal coordination, as in the case of the Venlo incident.
The municipality of Venlo, however, said it had no prior knowledge of the incident and reiterated that it has no jurisdiction over border control or immigration enforcement. “The police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are responsible for supervising the lawful residence of foreign nationals. Furthermore, it is up to the national governments to make mutual agreements about this,” a spokesperson for Mayor Scholten said.
The Dutch coalition government collapsed recently over the insistence of Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), for a stricter asylum policy.
With fresh elections on the horizon, Wilders has remained committed to defending the Dutch border, potentially putting any future Dutch government on a collision course with Berlin over such practices.
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