Migration: More than 6,000 deportations from Germany in the first quarter

In the first three months of this year, 6,151 people were deported from Germany. This was revealed by the German government's response to a query from the Left Party in the Bundestag, which was made available to the German editorial network on Friday. Extrapolated to the entire year, this would amount to more than 24,000 deportations – significantly more than in previous years.

In 2024, a total of approximately 20,000 people were deported from Germany, compared to around 16,500 in 2023. However, this year's number could rise even more sharply than the first-quarter figures suggest: deportations in the first few months of the year were still the responsibility of the previous federal government. The CDU and CSU, in particular, have announced that they will carry out more returns in the future than before.

Most were deported to Turkey, Georgia, France, Spain, and Serbia. 157 people were deported to Iraq, and five to Iran. Around 1,700 of the deportations were so-called "Dublin transfers" to other European countries responsible for asylum procedures under the Dublin Regulation.

The Dublin Agreement on the treatment of asylum seekers in the European Union stipulates that refugees must submit their asylum application in the EU country in which they first set foot on European soil.

According to the report, slightly more than a third of the deportations took place on costly charter flights. Collective deportations to Pakistan were particularly expensive and complex, with costs totaling €462,000. The costs for deportation flights to Ethiopia amounted to €418,000, and for others to Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon, €380,000. However, the European border protection agency Frontex covered the costs for many of these flights.

Left Party MP Clara Bünger criticized the authorities' actions. She said she was aware of "several deportations" in which the police acted "brutally and without any empathy." "We're talking about families being cold-bloodedly torn apart, or about sick people being literally kidnapped from the hospital and taken from there to a deportation flight," Bünger told the RND.