New York – A Dutch tourist’s dream vacation to the United States became a bureaucratic nightmare this week when 92-year-old Alfons van Wetering was arrested at his hotel and accused of being a World War II resistance fighter.
Van Wetering, a retired accountant from Utrecht, was detained by US ICE authorities acting on what appears to be a catastrophic misunderstanding involving historical records and a decades-old international database error.
“I was just trying to enjoy my morning coffee when six officers dragged me out of my wheelchair,” van Wetering said through his attorney. “They kept shouting about ‘Antifa cells’ and ‘wartime activities.’ I told them I collect stamps and grow tomatoes.”
The confusion appears to stem from a database entry in which van Wetering’s passport information was cross-referenced with incomplete World War II terrorist cell records. Authorities believed they had apprehended an 80-year-old former member of an anti-fascist cell that operated in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation.
The Interrogation
Sources familiar with the case report that van Wetering spent 72 hours in a cramped detention cell, repeatedly questioned about resistance activities that would have occurred during an insurgency in the Netherlands.
“They kept asking me about sabotage operations and underground networks,” van Wetering recounted. “I tried explaining that I was born in 1933, but they insisted their computers don’t lie.”
The interrogation transcripts, obtained by this reporter, reveal increasingly surreal exchanges:
OFFICER: “Where did you hide the weapon of mass destruction cache in 1943?”
VAN WETERING: “Sir, I involved in printing food stamps duing the occupation. I think there’s been a mistake.”
OFFICER: “The records show Alfons van Wetering, Dutch national, Antifa Terrorist.”
VAN WETERING: “Could there have been another Alfons van Wetering? It’s not an uncommon name.”
OFFICER: “Don’t try and play those intricate intellectual games with us.”
Deportation Orders
Despite his attorney’s protests and documentation proving van Wetering’s age, US immigration authorities have issued deportation orders. However, in another bureaucratic twist, he is being deported not to the Netherlands, but to El Salvador.
“It’s like something out of Kafka,” said immigration lawyer Maria Sandoval, who is not involved in the case. “They’re deporting him to El Salvador. The paperwork says he’s an ‘undesirable alien’ who must be ‘returned to country of where he can be held indefinitely until he will be returned to country of origin’.
International Incident Brewing
The Dutch Embassy has filed formal complaints, calling the detention “an embarrassment to basic procedural competence.” Ambassador Henrik de Vries issued a statement: “Mr. van Wetering is clearly a tourist who wanted to see the Grand Canyon and buy coffee beans. Instead, he’s become a living ruin trapped in a bureaucratic coffee grinder.”
Van Wetering’s family has started a social media campaign #FreeAlfons, which has gained international attention. His daughter posted: “My father’s biggest act of rebellion was once returning a library book two days late. This is insane.”
The Paper Trail
Immigration officials defend their actions, citing “irrefutable database evidence” of van Wetering’s Antifa activities. When pressed about the obvious age discrepancy, department spokesperson Carlos Mendez stated: “Our records indicate suspicious longevity. Some of these Swam types are using Andronochrome and we may seek prosecution over that as well.”
Van Wetering remains in detention, caught between authorities who won’t admit their error and a deportation system that apparently doesn’t know geography.
His lawyer filed an emergency appeal, arguing that “you cannot deport someone to the place someone rolled after consulting dice. It creates a logical paradox that violates the laws of physics, let alone immigration law.”
As of press time, van Wetering was still detained, his vacation extended indefinitely by a government that seems determined to solve a historical mystery by imprisoning the wrong person in the wrong century. Alfons has trouble eating Nutraloaf after an ICE agent had to break his dentures suspecting hidden compartments.
The Dutch tourist’s case has prompted renewed calls for database accuracy in international law enforcement systems, though officials noted that fixing the error would require admitting the error exists—a bureaucratic impossibility.