ASPASIA FALKI
It’s been seven years since the Ministry of Immigration and Integration established the Departure Center Kaershovedgaard in Central Jutland and some citizens of a small town in the area still feel afraid of living in their own community.
It is a summer, but cold morning in the Danish town of Bording. Almost 2,400 residents live here but the few of them that can be seen this morning are too focused on their jobs to notice a stranger. One man is mowing the lawn, the other is caring building supplies to a construction across the street· a lady is walking slowly with her baby, holding it steady and pushing it into making the next step.
It seems like this carelessness wasn’t always the picture. A few years back, when the deportation camp first opened in 2016, the village had unexpected “visitors”. Run by the Danish Correctional Service, Kaershovedgaard and the two more existing camps across Denmark for rejected asylum seekers, accommodate people set to be deported. Some of them are just people who found themselves “in the wrong place”, according to Ib Lauritsen, mayor of the Ikast – Brande Municipality.
“There are three categories of people living in the camp. Those who will be sent home, because they don’t have the necessary documents to be here. Criminals that are here, but they are punished and now they have to go back home because that is what the judges have decided. And then there is the third category and that’s people who cannot go anywhere in the world”.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Immigration and Integration about the number and the status of residents in the deportation camp, shows that in 2021 there were approximately 260 rejected asylum seekers living there. Among them, 138 were convicted criminals who had been prosecuted in their home countries for murders, rape, violence, terrorism and other criminal activities.
Insecurity is the main problem in the area
People from Kaershovedgaard are free to leave the camp during the day, but they are obligated to sleep there every night and report to the police daily or at least several times per week. It is a requirement applied to all the residents and there is no exception for the ones who have committed crimes, as they aren’t treated as prisoners.
From 2011 to 2015 693 reports were made in total to the Central and West Jutland Police. Five years after Kaershovedgaard was established those reports met a decrease of 2.5 percent and fell to 676. Those statistics by the local Police came as quite a surprise to the common feeling among the residents who live in the wider area around the camp.
Until 2022, several video footage by residents were brought to public attention showing men in hoods slipping out of the camp through a crack on the fence. The reports made to the police concerning thefts, vandalism, the use and sale of drugs and other criminal activities in the town, have resulted in a widespread feeling of insecurity among citizens.
Bording is the main destination for the residents of the camp. They visit the village daily and this makes many of the villagers feel unsafe. Some of them didn’t feel comfortable enough to be interviewed because of the “attention that it would draw in “themselves and their village”. Others, more determined, shared their experiences.
In Bording residents are always cautious with foreigners, because they know that most of them are coming from the camp. Places with more population like Ikast or Silkeborg have many immigrants, so those people can go unnoticed there. As Thomas Rasmussen, manager of the 365 Discount Market mentions, this is probably the reason that they don’t steal that much anymore.
“It was worse five-six years ago”, adds Rasmussen. Many local owners had then talked to the politicians to install alarm bells to protect their businesses. “They costed a lot to the police, but now we can call them the moment they cause trouble”.
Lars Lausten, local businessman and President of the Bording’s Business Association says that the criminal refugees often break into private properties. “There are ten or eleven small houses in the area around Kaershovedgaard. They have got alarms and security cameras especially for the children, because their parents get scared when they see men walking down their houses”.
Security guards for extra protection
About six months ago, two new security guards were placed in Bording to reassure insecure residents. Guards were appointed when the deportation camp first opened for protection and to deal with the problems that the criminals refugees cause. They are taking shifts driving around the town up to Isenvad which is an even smaller settlement west of the camp with a little more than 700 residents. But people there don’t have that many problems, because there are no stores in the area, as several mentioned.
“When we talk about the problem, we talk mostly about Bording. And the reason for that is that they [the criminal refugees] can take a bicycle from Kaershovedgaard to Boarding, and there is also a train stopping there”, says Lauritsen.
“We try to support the people in Bording and in the area. It is our problem because there are our citizens. But I can’t do anything at all when it comes to that center”, he continues.
Every time a train arrives James Confney is there to wave and smile at the passengers. He is a security guard for 37 years and was placed in Bording three months ago.
“I can see that the residents are very satisfied that the state appointed security guards. It has to be peace and quiet here, because there are a lot of people around and some of them are frightened of the Kaershovedgaard”, he says.
“There are some of them [residents from Kaershovedgaard] who are drinking a lot and I have to tell them to take it easy, but nothing more as long as I have been here. But I do have to watch out for them, because sometimes they steal bikes”.
When the Minister of Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye with the Social Democratic party of Denmark visited the area two years ago, the locals told him their problems. “We talked to him about five-six incidents that happened and made the neighbors feel really afraid of staying out there. He said that he can’t do anything about it, that the government won’t move the camp”, says Lausten.
Local security was financed by the Ministry of Immigration jointly with the Finance Act to upgrade safety in Bording and Isenvad and prevent any other incidents. “Every year they give us 20,000 kr. (Danish kroner) for security. Now we have both money and security, but the problem is that Kaershovedgaard is still out there. Better to move it and save the 20,000”, Lausten insists.
Lise Nørgaard-Andersen, 44, is the owner of the only flower shop in the town. She has spent her whole life here and with guards placed, she feels safer. She was really worried about her daughter, but now is 21 years old, so she is not that scared for her anymore, as she explains.
She believes that when it comes to the camp, the Danish government didn’t support them enough. “It’s easy when it’s a small city and they just put all the problems on it. They wouldn’t do that in Copenhagen”. But she is more than satisfied with the guards, as she is stating:
Lise Nørgaard-Andersen and her flower shop in Bording. Photo: Aspasia Falki.
“The public in general would like the center to be moved to another place, but then it will be just a new public’s problem”
Thomas Rasmussen, manager 365 Discount Market.
There is a consensus among the villagers that the deportation center should be relocated. But the Ministry’s plans to move it to Langeland soon sank, due to its residents’ opposition and strong protests against it, and the ones in Bording left disappointed again.
Is Kaershovedgaard really the problem?
“The statistics show that there are no more criminal activities going on in the area than there have been before Kæreshovedgård was placed. So, it’s just that people who fear the unknown”, says Mette Roerup, one of the coordinators in the movement “Grandparents for Asylum”. She actively helps children and parents whose residence permits are being reviewed or have been revoked by the government and supports their rights.
“You know, they have very strict rules for the people there because some of them have been criminals. But Denmark cannot send people back if they are at risk. But then they put them under very difficult conditions”, says Roerup.
On account of the recent disappearance of the so-called “Axe Man”, a well-known terrorist who was living in Kaershovedgaard for the past few years, the Liberal Alliance party of Denmark, highlights the importance of isolating those people from the rest of the residents.
Their proposal suggests those convicted for terrorism and radicalization to be isolated from the other residents, to wear anklets when they leave the center and be deprived from their right to leave the country.
“I don’t think it will solve the problems one-hundred percent for those who live in the area. But it will perhaps reduce the problems so that we will be able to get better control over some of the people who are there and who are dangerous”, says Steffen Larsen, judicial rapporteur for the Liberal Alliance to the Danish newspaper “Avisen Denmark”.
There are others as well, who think that the criminals should be separated from the refugees who have nothing to do with criminal activities. Some even think that those people should not live in camps managed by the Danish Correctional Service.
According to a 2018 report from the Freedom of Movement Research Collective the deportation centers have resulted in drastic deterioration of the living conditions and the mental and physical health of rejected asylum-seekers”. This means that the people living in those centers are frequently affected mentally and physically, because of the extremely strict conditions that dominate there. It has been recorded that they can only eat during specific times a day, there are no activities to spend their time and they are forced to live with criminals convicted for crimes that makes them afraid for their life.
Some residents in Bording as well recognise that there are people from the center that have done nothing wrong. “The ones that have been denied asylum are just friendly, but the criminals are a bigger problem”, says Rasmussen.
“Those who are really criminals, they should be moved, because a lot of the others at the centers are afraid of them. And this should be done, because it’s too bad that some look at one person and see them all as the same, because they’re not the same”, says Andersen.
“A lot of the people who live out there are very nice and very polite and they’re just people with problems. I get sad when people just look at them and see the worse. We have to look at the person, because there are also Danes who are not good people. We are not all the same”.
Things have been quiter in the area around Kaershovedgaard the last years. The government has decided to give compensations to those living closest to the center, especially to those who wanted to sell their properties back in 2016 and they suddenly lost their value because of the center. Some ended up compromising, but some others are still concerned with the camp and its residents.
