Almost 40% of the deportations of refugees who have lost their appeals to stay in the Netherlands are called off at the last minute, the NRC says on Wednesday.

Last year, 1,225 out of 3,165 plane tickets were unused, the paper says. It bases its claim on justice ministry figures. In 2013, some 30% of deportations failed to take place.

A ministry spokesman told the paper that since 2013 some groups of refugees cannot be held in a detention centre prior to being deported. This makes it easier for them to disappear, the spokesman said.

In other cases, deportations are cancelled because of administrative errors or because military police escorts are stuck in traffic.

The spokesman said that most people whose deportations are cancelled do leave the Netherlands but did not provide any figures.

Missing

Last November, broadcaster Nos said that 4,000 of the 8,000 asylum seekers who had lost their claim to refugee status in the Netherlands in 2015, returned to their country of origin, either voluntarily or via deportation programmes.

The whereabouts of the remaining 4,000 is unknown, and they may have remained in the Netherlands without papers, the broadcaster said.

The Netherlands has a policy of evicting failed asylum seekers from refugee centres if they refuse to cooperate with their deportation and refugee organisation Vluchtelingenwerk estimates some 5,000 would-be refugees are turned out onto the street every year.

Several hundred high profile failed asylum seekers are currently squatting or living in temporary accommodation in Amsterdam and other cities. They say they cannot return home because it is unsafe or because they don’t have proper papers.