In a place where contact with the outside world is limited, these small moments can mean so much. One longstanding member of the wakes, ‘S’, says: “We want to make contact with them to show that there are other people in the Netherlands other than the IND, guards, and their lawyers.” As a participant of the wakes, they also state that “here you also feel a sense of powerlessness”. By showing up, we can show people in detention that they are not alone.
There is one thing I remember about the wake more than anything: the way I thought the whistles could be birds if I just closed my eyes. The surroundings of the Detention Centre are barren, few trees, one road. The occasional airplane flying overhead. At our wakes outside Schiphol Detention Centre, we use a whistle to let people inside know: we are here.
From the other side of the walls, people in detention hear the whistle and we find ways to connect. Sometimes through words, but often without words at all. Children draw with chalk. People wave. Eyes meet. A hand reaches up and shapes a heart. These are the impressions left with me after participating at the latest Schiphol wake on the 23rd of August.
PhD candidate, Iman Delimustafić (Tilburg University), is participating in the wakes as part of the research she is conducting on Catholic Worker communities. Her research is about how these communities put their beliefs into practice and, in doing so, strive to bring about a future free of the injustice that is all too prevalent in our present. These wakes, she argues, are a way of doing so: at once a protest and a sign of hospitality towards the people locked up in the detention centre.
After finishing the round past all the windows of the detention centre, we arrived back at the entrance of the building. Looking inside the lobby, the clean and practical design pops out. Yet the most striking feature is the large picture of the King of the Netherlands. You can reflect on this dissonance endlessly, I question how and why detention of undocumented people can still be in place in the Netherlands.
I’ll end with a quote from a t-shirt one of the young men waving to us: “Never Stop Loving”.
Join us at one of the next wakes:
November 1 2026, 16.00 pm, Detentiecentrum Rotterdam (every first Sunday of the month)
November 1 2026, 16.30 pm, Justitieel Complex Zeist (every first Sunday of the month)
November 8 2026, 15.30 pm, Justitieel Complex Schiphol