Dutch border police stopped 1,465 people with false travel documents at the borders last year, up 9.5% on 2020 but virtually the same as in earlier years.

‘We had expected the total would go down because of the impact of coronavirus on travel, but in fact se saw a considerable increase,’ spokesman Robert van Kapel told NOS radio. ‘That was partly because migration routes opened up again and human traffickers sent people off with forged papers.’

Most of the fake documents were passports and ID cards, but the police also found documents for countries which did not exist, and people with a ‘world passport’.

Most forged or fake documents were found at airports – with Schiphol accounting for over 1,000 of the total. Almost 400 were spotted at border checks between the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

A further 360 false or forged documents, mainly passports, were identified at refugee registration centres and 2,488 were spotted by national police, government inspectors and council officials during routine ID checks.