COPENHAGEN: Denmark is facing growing criticism for a decision last year to revoke residence permits for Syrian refugees, citing a “safe” situation around Damascus, but the country is sticking to its position.
The tough Danish stance is a new sign of the country now having one of Europe’s most restrictive migration policies.
“No other country in Europe has adopted such a policy,” Niels-Erik Hansen, a lawyer specializing in migration issues, told AFP.
In the last election in 2019, the Social Democrats, headed by Mette Frederiksen, adopted a restrictive line on immigration and managed to take power from the conservative government propped up by the far-right Danish People’s Party.
Widespread indifference toward the policy change in the Scandinavian country was upended in early April, after one of Hansen’s clients, a teenager about to graduate secondary school, pleaded for her case on Danish television.
Speaking in fluent Danish, 19-year-old Aya Abu-Daher moved viewers as she asked, holding back tears, what she had “done wrong.”
The “excellent student” according to the headmaster of her high school in Nyborg is campaigning for her family to be allowed to stay.
The young Syrian girl was recently told that her residence permit, which expired at the end of January, would not be renewed.
Like her, 189 Syrians have already had their residence permits revoked since the summer of 2020 after Copenhagen decided to re-examine the cases of around 500 Syrians from Damascus, under the control of Bashar Assad’s regime.
The revocations were on the grounds that “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit.”
Some of the rejected applicants, who had originally been granted only a temporary permit, have been placed in a detention center.
“Being in a return center, you can’t work nor study and you get food three times a day. Basically they keep you there until you sign a paper saying that you’ll return voluntarily to Syria,” Hansen told AFP.
Under Danish immigration law, temporary residence permits are issued without an end date in cases of a “particularly serious situation in the country of origin characterised by arbitrary violence and attacks against civilians,” but can be revoked once conditions are deemed to have improved.
Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to Statistics Denmark
Last week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was concerned about Denmark’s decision, even with deportations currently suspended because of a lack of collaboration between Denmark and the Syrian regime after years of civil war.
UNHCR said it “does not consider that the recent improvements in security in parts of Syria to be sufficiently fundamental, stable or durable to justify ending international protection for any group of refugees.”
Rights group Amnesty International has also denounced the “worrisome development.”
“Denmark keeps sending signals that they don’t want any asylum seekers in the country and scaring the ones who are here into returning to their home countries even when they are not safe,” Lisa Blinkenberg, a senior adviser for Amnesty in Denmark, told AFP.
“Not only is Denmark the worst place in Europe but the country also shows a lack of solidarity with other European countries refusing to take a share in the burden,” Hansen said.
But, despite criticism even from within parliament, the government is sticking to its guns.
“The government’s policy is working, and I won’t back down, it won’t happen,” Social Democratic migration minister Mattias Tesfaye said after Aya Abu-Daher’s plea was broadcast.
“Denmark has been open and honest from day one. We have made it clear to the Syrian refugees that their residence permit is temporary and that the permit can be revoked if the need for protection ceases to exist,” Tesfaye told AFP on Friday.
The Nordic country has a stated goal of “zero asylum seekers,” and also offers special grants for voluntary returnees grants, which were accepted by 137 Syrians in 2020.
Danish plan to repatriate Syrians sparks controversy
https://arab.news/b2pg3
Danish plan to repatriate Syrians sparks controversy
- Speaking in fluent Danish, 19-year-old Aya Abu-Daher moved TV viewers as she asked, holding back tears, what she had ‘done wrong’
- The ‘excellent student’ according to the headmaster of her high school in Nyborg is campaigning for her family to be allowed to stay
Counter protesters chase off conservative influencer during Minneapolis immigration crackdown
MINNEAPOLIS: Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally in support of the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown in Minneapolis on Saturday, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement though not yet deployed to city streets.
There have been protests every day since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.
Conservative influencer Jake Lang organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-ICE demonstration, saying on social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Qur’an” on the steps of City Hall. But it was not clear if he carried out that plan.
Only a small number of people showed up for Lang’s demonstration, while hundreds of counterprotesters converged at the site, yelling over his attempts to speak and chasing the pro-ICE group away. They forced at least one person to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.
Lang appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving clemency as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. Lang recently announced that he is running for US Senate in Florida.
In Minneapolis, snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.
“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”
National Guard ‘staged and ready’
The state guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”
Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.
During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and other aggressive tactics. The operation in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Good, a US citizen and mother of three, was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
Living in fear
During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson’s front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.
The White House denied the account of the re-arrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge’s ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in.”
