Why deportations are back on the agenda
Why deportations are back on the agenda
A terror attack in Solingen was the last straw for many. Germany is now prepared to deport people back to Syria and Afghanistan.
Dear Reader,
As I’m sure you are now aware, a Syrian man carried out a horrific terror attack at a street party in Solingen on Friday. Armed with a knife, he managed to kill three people and injure nine more.
For many Germanys, this rampage seems to have been the final straw. Disillusionment with the Willkommenskultur -the welcoming culture that began in 2015 -has been simmering for years.
In a dark twist, the murders took place at a “festival for diversity,” an event where the town's mayor had called for a celebration of Germany’s cultural pluralism.
Among the candles and flowers left at the crime scene the following day, one message stood out, dripping with irony: “Thank you, Angela Merkel.”
A growing number of Germans believe that the country's political establishment has turned a blind eye to the link between its laissez-faire migration policies and the rising tide of crime.
Proof of this rising sense of anger will come at two state elections this weekend. The anti-immigration AfD are projected to win in both Saxony and Thuringia with more than double the combined votes for the ‘mainstream’ parties in Scholz’ coalition.
The chancellor’s initial response to the attack hardly helped to allay the public’s. In Solingen, as he expressed his condolences, he announced plans to tighten knife crime laws - a move that misses the mark entirely.
Nobody seriously believes that tighter laws alone could have prevented this tragedy. The killer, who was unknown to the police, used a kitchen knife. Unless Germany wants to go down the dystopian path of security checks at all public events, tighter knife laws are an ineffective attempt to treat the symptoms rather than the illness.
It’s important to distinguish between different types of knife crime. Yes, there has been a general increase in stabbings, particularly in places like train stations, where police unions are calling for greater stop-and-search powers. In crime hotspots, this approach might indeed prove effective.
But the attack in Solingen was of a different nature - a type of crime that first emerged in 2016. These incidents, often perpetrated by radicalised or mentally unstable immigrants, target random victims in public spaces - on trains, in shops, in market squares, or even on school routes. The randomness of these attacks makes them almost impossible to predict or prevent.
At the same time, there is no reason to throw up our hands in defeat, as the country’s leading liberal newspaper did in a remarkably fatalistic op-ed titled “There is No Defence Against These Types of Murders.”
A common thread links almost all of these attacks: they are typically carried out by young, single males who came to Germany as refugees. These individuals do not have a permanent right to live in the country. Thus, it is not inevitable that they stay - at least not forever.
This principle should apply not only to those who have committed crimes but also to the many young men who, over the past decade, have failed to take advantage of Germany’s clear path to citizenship. The criteria are clear: don’t break the law, get a job, learn the language and you can get citizenship after five years. That is fair and right. Yet there are many thousands who have failed to go down this path. They remain here on limited visas which are tied to the security situation in their home countries.
It is the job of the German government, alongside its judicial system, to regularly reassess whether conditions in countries like Afghanistan and Syria have improved sufficiently to allow for deportations.
German law provides a clear framework for this process: the state must demonstrate that a deportee would not face a threat to their life or physical safety. Only if a judge is happy that these stringent conditions have been fulfilled, can a deportation proceed.
Over the past year, four state courts have examined the legality of deportations to Afghanistan - with mixed results. Two courts ruled in favour, two against.
Notably, these decisions often hinged not on the risk of persecution but on whether the deportees would face “impoverishment” upon their return. In 2022, the federal administrative court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht) clarified that deportees’ basic needs only need to be met “for a foreseeable period.”
Meeting these criteria should not be beyond the capabilities of the German state. This is likely why Scholz and his interior minister are currently considering offering financial incentives to deported criminals who return to Afghanistan.
Last week, the interior ministry confirmed to Bild Zeitung that it was “examining how to create the operational and legal conditions for deportations to Afghanistan,” saying that “the payment of financial travel assistance can serve to create such legal conditions.”
The other challenge lies in what the interior ministry refers to as “operational conditions.” To you and me, this means figuring out how to deport people without entering into direct negotiations with the Taliban. The government is currently hashing out a secretive deal with Uzbekistan, which would allow Germany to fly deportees to Tashkent, from where they would continue on to Kabul.
With progress being made on both legal and logistical fronts, Scholz felt confident enough to announce to the Bundestag in June that deportations to both Afghanistan and Syria would soon begin.
However, whether Syria is truly a viable option seems much less certain.
The foreign ministry has assessed the security situation in Assad-controlled Syria and delivered an unequivocal verdict: the humanitarian situation is “catastrophic” and marked by “arbitrary use of power and even complete lawlessness.” The ministry concluded that “a safe return of refugees cannot currently be guaranteed for any region of Syria.”
That view isn’t universally accepted. Last month, the state administrative court in North Rhine-Westphalia rejected a Syrian smuggler’s appeal for asylum, arguing that the civil war in his home country had effectively ended.
The court ruled that “no serious individual threat to life or physical integrity… in the context of an internal armed conflict” existed, meaning that the man didn’t qualify for ‘subsidiary protection,’ the most basic form of asylum granted to Syrians who cannot prove that they face individual persecution.
All in all, Germany is not helpless in the fight against these awful crimes. Deportations of young men who have failed to integrate can happen. The law protects them - as it should - but that protection doesn’t need to last a day longer than the security situation in their home countries demands.
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