New Justice Law: more illegal criminals to be expelled

The choice of State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Theo Francken, to focus his repatriation policy on criminal illegal immigrants is clearly bearing fruit: never were more criminals expelled than in 2015. "And the new justice law, which has also been approved by Parliament, will increase the return figures among criminals by hundreds every year," Theo Francken asserts.

Due to this law, from now on illegal prisoners can only be released early if they are prepared to return to their home country. If they return to Belgium at a later date, they will immediately have to serve the rest of their sentence. This increases the pressure on these people to cooperate with their identification and return. The measure has been in place for years in the Netherlands and is a great success there.

Fighting overpopulation
"This change in the law represents a fundamental change with regard to security, justice and immigration. It also means we achieve one of our big election promises: prioritised expulsion of criminal illegal immigrants. In addition, we fight the age-old Belgian affliction of overpopulated jails, freeing up quite a few places. This is an efficient and cost-effective policy," State Secretary Theo Francken concludes.