More than half of the arrests made by the Brussels police concerned people in an irregular situation in Belgium in September. This impressive figure was given to the Dutch-speaking Belgian daily De Tijd, by the Brussels police prefect himself, Michel Goovaerts. “We arrested 585 individuals, including 298 illegal immigrants, in September,” he said.
Illegal immigration and the retention on Belgian soil of individuals without a residence permit, particularly following the refusal of their asylum request, has been at the heart of the Belgian political debate since the attack of October 16, committed by a Tunisian. without papers – who we also learned was the subject of an extradition request from his country of origin. “Anyone who stays illegally in our country does not have the right to a place in society,” liberal Prime Minister Alexander De Croo declared in Parliament.
The daily De Tijd recalls that, by definition, illegal immigration is difficult to measure in Belgium. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel estimates that around 112,000 people remain illegally on Belgian soil. Authorities say they issue around 20,000 eviction orders each year.
The author of the October 16 attack which left two dead and one injured, Abdesalem Lassoued, had entered Belgium clandestinely before submitting an asylum application, rejected in 2021. This did not prevent him from to settle there, and to lead, according to the images published on his Facebook account and consulted by Tijd journalists, “a pleasant life”. Not having a residence permit, he could not work in Belgium, but his wife owned a hairdressing salon.
Also read: Alain Destexhe: “In Belgium, immigration is suffered and integration is a failure”
As undocumented immigrants do not officially have the right to work in Belgium, they fall more frequently than the rest of the population into delinquency. According to police prefect Michel Goovaerts, Brussels is experiencing an upsurge in rapid thefts, particularly snatching, of “handbags or watches” committed largely by illegal immigrants.
The figures he gave on the share of illegal immigrants among the people arrested by the police in Brussels match those of other Belgian municipalities: the Flemish city of Vilvoorde, for example, indicates having arrested 67 illegal immigrants, out of 147 arrests in total since the beginning of the year.
Even in the event of a criminal offense, these arrests most often remain without consequences, deplores Michel Goovaerts. “Sometimes we arrest someone in the morning and arrest them again in the afternoon,” he explains. “You cannot send back Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians because their countries of origin prefer to get rid of them. And there is a lack of space and staff in closed asylum centers. You can imagine the frustration of our police officers,” he adds.
In Belgium, specialists in Islamist radicalization are also concerned about the breeding ground that these illegal criminals represent for terrorist organizations. The co-founder of the Ceapire deradicalization center, Ilyas Zarhoni, notably declared that “people in an irregular situation are off the radar for structures preventing and combating radicalization.”
