Mobile security checks and ethnic profiling · ECLI:NL:GHDHA:2023:173
Court of Appeal of The Hague · 14 February 2023
Travellers and rights organisations challenged how the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee selected people for mobile immigration checks. The dispute concerned the very first decision to stop someone. Could an officer treat perceived ethnicity as an indication that a traveller might lack residence rights, alongside other factors?
What the appeal court prohibited
The Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s approach and prohibited the state from making selection decisions in these checks that relied on race or ethnicity. Adding other criteria did not cure that discriminatory selection. The judgment addressed a general selection practice. Looking for a particular identified suspect on the basis of a specific description presents a different question.
What to record after a stop
Write down the time, route, officers’ explanations and the sequence in which people were selected. Distinguish what you saw from what you inferred. If documents were checked or a decision was issued, keep those separately. Whether a stop was discriminatory and whether a later immigration decision was lawful are distinct issues, each with its own evidence and remedy.
Read the Dutch Court of Appeal judgment
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