Germany’s Minister of Interior welcomed five European counterparts for a powerful meeting to build support for tougher asylum rules across the continent. This meeting highlighted a newly emerging commitment among European countries to clamp down harder on migration. Germany, meanwhile, has doubled down on the return regime. Just recently, the country deported 81 Afghan nationals to Afghanistan, now under the rule of the Taliban.
The deportations have ignited an already highly charged debate within Germany. Chancellor Friedrich Merz did not budge in his defense of the expulsions. Most importantly, he stressed that they delivered on his government’s commitments when first taking office in May. He added, “We didn’t have a residence status at all. All asylum applications were automatically refused in law without any further legal recourse. This is an empty statement that highlights the government’s failure to set out how they will effectively process asylum applications or deport people.
Recent Deportations and Justifications
After these policy changes, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg announced a major breakthrough. In June, USA Today published a similar story claiming that 13 of the deported Afghans had criminal convictions. These people had been incarcerated for major crimes such as murder, aggravated bodily injury, drug-related crime, and arson. Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann was quick to note that 15 of those deported from his state had records of violent crimes. This was true despite the predicate offending charges like murder, manslaughter, sexual assault, and property offenses.
The timing of these deportations is especially fraught, considering the precarious state of affairs in Afghanistan today. Although Germany had stopped deportations since the Taliban retook power in 2021, their government had used human rights arguments as an excuse. Amnesty International has reported that “extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and torture are commonplace” in the country, raising alarms about the safety of returning individuals.
A Shift in European Migration Policy
The recent extraordinary meeting of European interior ministers ended with a five-page communique setting out their shared goals on migration. One of the measures that have been proposed is to set up “return hubs.” These hubs will confine people outside of the EU while their asylum applications are assessed. As German Minister Alexander Dobrindt put it, this represents an enormous shift in Germany’s policy for European migration policy. He added, “We really wanted to send a signal that Germany is no longer sitting in the brakeman’s cab on migration issues in Europe, we are now driving the locomotive.”
This joint action by European countries shows an important turn in the direction of stricter asylum policies. With ongoing discussions about the management of migration flows, Germany and its allies are positioning themselves to address what they perceive as a pressing challenge.
