Netherlands Runs Out of Room: Asylum Seekers Bussed to Sports Hall as Registration Centre Overflows

2026-06-02 facilities

Ter Apel, 2 June 2026
With over 2,100 people crammed into a facility built for 2,000, the Netherlands’ main asylum registration centre at Ter Apel has reached breaking point — forcing authorities to bus asylum seekers nightly to a sports hall in a small Drenthe village.

From Groningen to Drenthe: The Baton Passes

As reported in our earlier coverage, Groningen was the first city to step forward when Ter Apel began turning asylum seekers away nightly — a situation that left around 120 people without shelter each evening and raised uncomfortable questions about where national responsibility truly lies. That full background can be read here. Since then, the crisis has not abated — it has simply moved, night by night, from one borrowed hall to the next. The latest chapter opened on the evening of Monday, 1 June 2026, when the municipality of Borger-Odoorn in the province of Drenthe took over from Warffum as the emergency host, converting the Hunsowhal sports hall in the small village of 2e Exloërmond into a temporary shelter for up to 150 asylum seekers [1][2].

A Sports Hall, a Bus, and a Three-Night Window

The logistics of the arrangement are precise and tightly managed. Each evening between 22:00 and 23:30, asylum seekers who cannot be accommodated at Ter Apel are bussed to the Hunsowhal in 2e Exloërmond, a village just a few kilometres from the registration centre [2][5]. By between 06:00 and 07:00 the following morning, they are returned to Ter Apel to continue with their registration procedures [2][5]. The Red Cross is present throughout the night, and security personnel are on duty both day and night [2]. Residents living near the Hunsowhal were informed of the emergency arrangement by letter before it began [2]. The municipality of Borger-Odoorn, which administers the village of 2e Exloërmond, set up the 150 sleeping places in the sports hall together with the Red Cross, with COA — the Centraal Orgaan opvang asielzoekers, the national body responsible for housing asylum seekers — providing additional support [2][5]. The arrangement runs from Monday night, 1 June, through to Thursday morning, 4 June 2026, when it will definitively end [2][5].

The Numbers Behind the Crisis

The scale of the overcrowding at Ter Apel makes the urgency of these measures plain. At the weekend preceding the move to Borger-Odoorn, approximately 2,100 people were being housed at Ter Apel — a facility with a maximum permitted capacity of 2,000 [7]. That represents an excess of roughly 100 people above the legal limit, calculated as 100. In the days prior, the Warffum emergency shelter — the Op Roakeldaishal in the Groningen municipality of Het Hogeland — had hosted successively larger numbers: 45 asylum seekers on one night, then 60, then 92, before the arrangement there concluded [1][3][7]. A small number of individuals chose to sleep outdoors on the grass near Ter Apel rather than travel to emergency locations [3]. Since 20 May 2026, COA has operated a triage policy at Ter Apel, admitting only vulnerable asylum seekers directly — including unaccompanied minors and pregnant women — while others, predominantly single men, are redirected to emergency locations elsewhere [1][7]. The policy of redirecting non-vulnerable arrivals has been in place for over a week at the time of writing [1].

A Relay Race With No Finish Line

What is striking about the current situation is not simply the scale of the problem, but the ad hoc, relay-style nature of the response. Warffum stepped in first, made available by the municipality of Het Hogeland until Monday morning [3]. Before that, a congress centre in Groningen, an events venue in Warffum, and the municipalities of Gieten and Stadskanaal all offered assistance at different points [7]. Now Borger-Odoorn holds the baton — but only until Thursday, 4 June 2026 [2][5]. The mayor of Borger-Odoorn, Jan Seton, framed his municipality’s involvement explicitly in terms of solidarity with its neighbour: “We are happy to make our contribution by offering this temporary night shelter and to reduce the pressure on our neighbouring municipality of Westerwolde. This way we prevent refugees from having to sleep outside at the registration centre” [2][5]. The mayor of Ter Apel, Jaap Veenema, has been less measured in his assessment, warning previously that if emergency locations cannot be arranged in time, people will end up sleeping outside — a prospect he described bluntly: “It is not humane, and it causes problems with safety and liveability in and around Ter Apel” [1]. COA’s own chairman, Joeri Kapteijns, acknowledged the gravity of the decisions being made, describing the triage policy as “a painful decision” [1]. A COA spokesperson noted that arrival numbers at Ter Apel tend to peak at the beginning of the week and ease off towards the weekend — a pattern that may offer some temporary relief, but does nothing to address the structural shortfall in reception places nationally [3]. What happens after Thursday morning, 4 June, when the Borger-Odoorn arrangement ends, remains — as of Tuesday, 2 June 2026 — an open question, with no structural solution in sight [1][5][7].

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overcrowding emergency shelter