Nineteen-year-old Daniel Buter has been detained for weeks and is in danger of being deported to the Dominican Republic while he was born in Amsterdam.
The man's grandmother tells city channel AT5 that he has been living with her all his life. His parents went abroad without him.
Due to an accumulation of errors, the man has no Dutch identity. He was first registered via his mother's passport. But when she gave up her Dutch identity, that of the man also fell.
This was never discovered, because Buter's grandmother, on the advice of the municipality, had registered him at his primary school with his old citizen service number (BSN), writes Het Parool. If that had been discovered at the time, then other regulations for minors would have applied.
His lack of a Dutch identity only became a problem when he wanted to register for a study. At the beginning of November the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) came to pick him up. A police car also came by for this.
Man is in alien detention
Buter is currently in foreign detention awaiting his case, which is scheduled for February. He may be deported to the Dominican Republic. This is the country where his parents were born, but no longer live. The rest of his family lives in the Netherlands.
Family and friends try to ensure that the man can wait for his case in freedom. The IND was not yet available for comment on Thursday, but stated that it did not want to comment on individual matters at the city channel.
Halsema: 'Daniel does not belong in detention'
"I read the messages yesterday with horror. I also agree that Daniel does not belong in detention," said Mayor Femke Halsema on Thursday afternoon after asking GroenLinks. "He is an Amsterdam boy who should study at the moment."
"As a municipality, we have an active duty of care to help our residents if they get lost in bureaucracy and regulations."
Halsema said to investigate what went wrong with the municipality in this case. She contacted responsible State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND).