“**A former Danish immigration minister has been found guilty of illegally separating young asylum-seeking couples in a landmark impeachment trial.**
Judges ruled Inger Stoejberg’s decision in 2016 to separate couples was unlawful and jailed her for 60 days.”
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59636124](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59636124)
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On question about this case. If the marriages were illegal because involving a minor, why did she get into trouble for her decision ? That one part confuses me.
2 comments
Because everyone in denmark is entitled to individual investigation( not sure the term is correct) but in essence every case should be looked into as a singular case. The minister being made aware of this still decided to just seperate everyone. This is not legal
>If the marriages were illegal because involving a minor, why did she get into trouble for her decision ?
The marriages were, at the time, not illegal in and of themselves. You could get a dispensation to get married at the age of 16 (called Kongebrev – Royal Assent) in certain circumstances. This was removed because of this situation. And there were no law stating that anyone immigrating of seeking asylum in the country had to be separated no matter what if one of the people were under 18.
Additionally, as the other commentor said, various laws and requirements *guarantees* all people in Denmark the right to individual adjudication of their cases in the area of “social” which includes marriage, divorce, etc. In Denmark this is part of Retssikkerhedsloven (more specifically lov om retssikkerhed og administration på det sociale område – the law about [legal certainty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_certainty) and administration in the social sphere).
The reason why Inger chose to ignore that process was to score political points, which happened since she is still incredibly popular among a certain segment of the Danish society who wants her to lead the Danish People Party for her hard-line stance about immigration.