The asylum seekers have in many cases had their applications to remain in the Netherlands denied but they either cannot go back or refuse to return to their country of origin.

By 2018, the new council had pledged to set up 24 hour shelters for up to 500 undocumented migrants, but We Are Here stated it was against the hostels since they were only for a short time period and it disputed the plan to send asylum seekers back to their country of origin at the end of the project.

Refugees seeking asylum in the Netherlands are assessed by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service and then either gain residency or fail to do so, based on their documentary evidence.

[1][2] Some people fall into what human rights groups term the "asylum gap" since they are unable to return to their country of origin, whilst others want to go back but cannot because they do not possess the required visas or identity documents.

Much of the dispute with the council is that it only offers the so-called BBB service – Bed-Bath-Bread (Dutch: bed-bad-broodvoorziening) – that is to say an overnight accommodation open from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m., which cannot be stayed in during the day.

[4] A spokesperson for the group, Khalid Jone, who escaped war in Sudan and had lived in the Netherlands for 16 years, was granted a residence permit in 2018.

[10] In 2018, a newly elected Amsterdam city council, now controlled by a centre-left coalition of GroenLinks, D66, PvdA and SP, decided to go against the will of the Parliament and set up a 24-hour shelter for homeless failed asylum seekers.

[11] However, We Are Here as a group announced it would not make use of the shelter, since it would only exist for a maximum time of eighteen months and afterwards participants would be required to return to their country of origin.

[12] In March 2019, the council announced seven prospective sites for its plan to set up shelters for undocumented migrants.

[13] Femke Halsema, previously parliamentary leader of GroenLinks, started serving a six-year term as Mayor of Amsterdam in July 2018.

[16] We Are Here coalesced as a group in 2012, when a small number of asylum seekers whose claims had been rejected began a protest camp at the garden of the Diakonie on the Nieuwe Herengracht in the Grachtengordel in central Amsterdam.

[18] After a few nights staying at the Vondelpark Bunker and OT301, the group squatted an empty church in Bos en Lommer.

Mayor of Amsterdam Eberhard van der Laan then asked the group to leave a building they had squatted on the Weteringschans and the council offered the migrants the possibility to stay in a former prison for 6 months.

Of these, three had returned to their country of origin, three more were planning to, twelve had successfully gained residency, one person had died and the largest group (38) was formed by those still gathering documents for their asylum process.

A few days later, Ibrahim Touré from Côte d'Ivoire suffered a brain haemorrhage and broken vertebra when he fell off a stairway.

Police and ambulance services refused to enter the building, citing fears of the presence of asbestos, though the city had found none in an inspection earlier that same day.

Unusually, the owner did not want to evict the squatters but came to an arrangement with them whereby they could stay for a fixed time as long as the building costs were paid.

The security of short-term tenure allowed the former squatters to break the offices up into residential units and spaces which small businesses could rent affordably, thus supplying enough money to pay the costs of electricity, water, insurance and so on.

[35] In April 2017, the We Are Here subgroup composed of men from West Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan occupied a derelict office building on Nienoord street in Diemen.

[37] Normally the group would leave a building willingly after a court order or having made an agreement with the owner, but in this case the squatters said they would resist the eviction, since they were tired of constantly moving.

"[48] CDA Parliament member Madeleine van Toorenburg stated that "the enforcement of the law [which criminalised squatting] is a joke.

Identitair Verzet (a small Dutch branch of Generation Identity) claimed to have squatted a building but Ymere later stated a property guardian had let them into a house.

A heated confrontation between We Are Here and a resident, who happened to be the son of the chair of the local branch of the VVD, was filmed and circulated in the press.

[57][58] In April 2019, member of the collective Fortune M. was given a three-day jail sentence and a conditional fine of €150, for damaging a door during the attempt to squat the building.