The number of police officers escorting deported migrants from Germany has risen sharply over the past four years. Security staff are feeling the strain over safety concerns and distant destinations.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Bildfunk/S. Puchner
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The number of police officers accompanying deportation flights in Germany has nearly doubled in four years, despite overall deportations decreasing.
There were nearly 11,000 police officers on deportation flights in 2018, compared with 5,841 in 2014 — a jump of 5,639 in a four-year period, reported the German newspaper Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ).
During the same time period the total number of deportations has fallen — the German government told the NOZ that deportations had decreased from 10,787 in 2015 to 7,987 in 2018.
The German Interior Ministry told the NOZ that the number of police required on flights had risen "to ensure the safety onboard the airplane." A safety assessment is carried out for each individual deportation.
The NOZ reported that in 2018 there were 439 deportation flights heading to Morocco and 283 flights with Afghanistan as their destination.
An 'extreme burden' for police
Jörg Radek, vice chairman of the police union, said that the deportations placed an "extreme burden" on the deployed officers.
Many of the deportees were in an exceptional state emotionally, they said.
"They resist with any means: scratching, biting, spitting and kicking. Some police officers have been badly injured," he told the paper.
Deportations from Germany to Afghanistan
Mid-December 2016 saw the first collective deportation of 34 rejected Afghan asylum seekers from Germany to Kabul – the first of many. Germany halted the flights in late May 2017, but has now restarted them.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
By the planeload
On September 12, 2017, a flight left Germany's Düsseldorf airport for Afghanistan, carrying 15 rejected asylum seekers in what is the first group deportation to the country since a deadly car bomb blast near the German embassy in Kabul in late May. The opposition Greens and Left party slammed the resumption of deportations to Afghanistan as "cynical."
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Roessler
Fighting for a chance
In March 2017, high school students in Cottbus made headlines with a campaign to save three Afghan classmates from deportation. They demonstrated, collected signatures for a petition and raised money for an attorney to contest the teens' asylum rejections - safe in the knowledge that their friends, among them Wali (above), can not be deported as long as proceedings continue.
Image: DW/S.Petersmann
'Kabul is not safe'
"Headed toward deadly peril," this sign reads at a demonstration in Munich airport in February. Protesters often show up at German airports where the deportations take place. Several collective deportations left Germany in December 2016, and between January and May 2017. Protesters believe that Afghanistan is too dangerous for refugees to return.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Balk
From Würzburg to Kabul
Badam Haidari, in his mid-30s, spent seven years in Germany before he was deported to Afghanistan in January 2017. He had previously worked for USAID in Afghanistan and fled the Taliban, whom he still fears years later – hoping that he will be able to return to Germany after all.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C.F. Röhrs
Persecuted minorities
In January of the same year, officials deported Afghan Hindu Samir Narang from Hamburg, where he had lived with his family for four years. Afghanistan, the young man told German public radio, "is not safe." Minorities from Afghanistan who return because asylum is denied face religious persecution in the Muslim country. Deportation to Afghanistan is "life-threatening" to Samir, says change.org.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Wiedl
Reluctant returnees
Rejected asylum seekers deported from Germany to Kabul, with 20 euros in their pockets from the German authorities to tide them over at the start, can turn to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for assistance. Funded by the German Foreign Office, members of the IPSO international psychosocial organization counsel the returnees.
