Lower Saxony's government has expressed regret over a letter from the authorities revealing a lenient approach to deportations. The case, which has sparked outrage in the Bundestag, highlights the extreme measures some migrants employ to avoid being sent back to their home countries.

The German newspaper Bild has published a letter showing the challenges of deporting illegal migrants from Germany, particularly when authorities do not enforce measures rigorously. The letter, sent by Lower Saxony’s state immigration authority to the federal police at Düsseldorf airport, pertains to a man from the Ivory Coast.

„If the person concerned refuses boarding or otherwise tries to resist deportation, he may be released and return to his designated accommodation on his own,”

– th eletter states. In this instance, the 38-year-old migrant physically resisted by biting one policeman and punching another in the head. Consequently, federal police chose not to follow through with the deportation request and proceeded with legal action against the Ivorian migrant. The letter has provoked significant outrage in the federal parliament, with calls for stricter enforcement to ensure that migrants who refuse to leave Germany cannot evade deportation.sure that if migrants do not want to leave Germany, they cannot be forced to do so.

Legal policy spokesman Gunter Krings, from the parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), stated that „Lower Saxony is urging the federal police to break the law and encouraging deportees to resist the police. The state government must immediately end this scandalous behavior by its authorities.”

The social-democratic-green-liberal federal coalition government has attempted to address its declining support. Konstantin Kuhle, leader of the Lower Saxony Liberals, argued that the state immigration authority’s statement represents a complete abolotion of the rule of law.

„If enforcement is made more difficult, the state cannot simply abandon it. The Interior Ministry in Hanover must immediately halt this practice if it does not want to be accused of deliberately undermining order and control in migration policy,”

Mr. Kuhle said. However, Social Democrat Helge Lindh defended the state immigration authority’s order, pointing out that the letter merely provides police with the option to release a resisting migrant, rather than forcing them to act on the actual deportation order.

Gottfried Curio, az Alternatíva Németországért (AfD) politikusa a Die Welt német lapnak azt mondta:

Gottfried Curio, a politician for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticized the directive in a statement to the German newspaper Die Welt, saying

„the letter’s content is simply absurd. The directive from Lower Saxony is a deliberate sabotage of the rule of law.”

It is not uncommon for deportation attempts to fail at the final stage. In 2023, there were relatively few attempted deportations (47,760) compared to the number of rejected asylum seekers, foreign criminals and migrants with expired visas who were required to leave. According to the federal police, only 16,430 of these attempts resulted in actual deportations. Often, on the day of deportation, authorities find that the illegal migrants are not at their accommodation as they have gone into hiding. In response, the German government has introduced several measures, such as allowing officers searching for illegal migrants to also search neighboring houses and apartments.

A police source told Die Welt about incidents where migrants facing deportation would go to the bathroom an hour in advance to cover themselves with feces to prevent their deportation that day. Others resort to violence, such as punching, kicking, scratching, or attacking law enforcement officers with knives or other objects. According to the federal interior ministry, the first half of 2024 saw 132 failed deportation attempts due to active or passive resistance.

Heiko Teggatz, president of DPolG, the federal police union, has long advocated for change. He is calling on the federal government to grant police the power to detain migrants who obstruct deportations until the next available flight. However, he added that the government has ignored these calls for years.