Belgium’s immigration minister has called on authorities to detain people sheltering in a Brussels park known as a gathering point for asylum seekers, and return them to their home country.
“There is only one solution: We will lock them up and send them back to their home country, as difficult as that may be,” Theo Francken, a member of the right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), said in an interview with Flemish television VRT.
A number of asylum seekers and refugees congregate in Park Maximilien — located in front of the federal immigration office, near Brussels’ Gare du Nord railway station — to receive help from volunteers and NGOs, who help coordinate with city residents to offer them a place to sleep. According to these groups, between 600 and 700 people come to the park every day.
Francken insisted people who come to the park are “purely economic migrants,” not refugees, and accused rights groups of creating a “hub” for migrants trying to reach the United Kingdom, saying most people do not want to seek asylum in Belgium.
The N-VA politician also hit out at Brussels’ Socialist mayor, Philippe Close, saying the local government “pampered the NGOs and illegal migrants” in an attempt to “attack the N-VA” and show that “it is our fault.”
Federal police authorities — under N-VA Interior Minister Jan Jambon — have conducted several raids resulting in arrests of migrants at Brussels’ Gare du Nord, but are not authorized to intervene at Park Maximilien, which falls under the purview of local police.
“Three years of Park Maximilien. Three years of Socialist pampering of illegals and open border NGOs. If I was mayor of Brussels, two weeks and the problem would be fixed,” Francken tweeted.
Brussels’ mayor responded by urging Francken to “stop wasting time on social networks and focus on his own work.”
Francken has come under fire for his controversial remarks on migration before. The N-VA minister was forced to issue an apology last year after he used the hashtag #opkuisen — “cleaning up” in Dutch — in a Facebook post about arrests at Park Maximilien, and faced calls to resign in January over the deportation of Sudanese migrants who claimed they were tortured on their return.
Belgium, which is governed by a coalition of the N-VA and liberal and centrist parties, will see voters go to the polls in local elections in October and hold a national election next May.
This article has been updated.