The coalition government of center-right Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and center-left Social Democrats (SPD), which has been in office since May 2025, is aiming to significantly increase the number of people who have been ordered to leave the country in the campaign they are calling a “repatriation offensive.” However, the political and media debate has tended to focus on a different word: deportations.
The dispute over deportations to Syria, a country devastated by a long civil war, shows just how difficult this undertaking is — and just how divergent opinions are, even among the two conservative Christian parties. Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) recently visited the country and subsequently expressed caution: “Only possible to a very limited extent at this point in time,” was his assessment of the possibility of forced deportations.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spoken out, contradicting his foreign minister: “The civil war in Syria is over. There are now no longer any grounds for asylum in Germany, which means we can also begin repatriations,” Merz said on Monday in a press conference. Adding “Those who then refuse to return to the country can, of course, be deported in the future.”
The interior minister is negotiating with Syrian authorities
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) has emphasized that he wants to push ahead with deportations as a matter of principle. Germany has not deported any individuals to Syria for 12 years, due to the civil war raging there.
In practice, deportation plans often encounter obstacles due to the complex legal framework. On Monday, the Berlin-based group Migration Media Service addressed this issue in its analysis:
The procedure “is governed by national residency and procedural law, national constitutional law, European directives and regulations and obligations under international law,” the report states.
Legal scholar Hannah Franz from the University of Hamburg contributed to the report. Her analysis focused on detention centers for deportees and the federal government’s plan to increase the number of beds there, which is part of the promised repatriation offensive.
Additional accommodation is to be created in special detention centers or in separate areas designated for holding people awaiting deportation. There are currently around 800 such spaces nationwide.
According to Franz, the number of detainees has been rising for many years, reaching around 6,000 in 2024. At 90%, the large majority of detainees are men. “Only very few detention facilities are set up to detain women,” says Franz, drawing attention to an unresolved problem in the accommodation of detainees awaiting deportation.
Are there too few places for detainees awaiting deportation?
The problem is that only ten of the 16 federal states have their own facilities for holding those awaiting deportation. This means that they have to be accommodated elsewhere. Engelhard Mazanke, director of the State Office for Immigration in Berlin, is constantly searching for solutions to this problem.
Added to this is that deportations are impossible as long as they are contested in court. This often involves those cases in which the individual’s nationality is unclear. If they can’t or won’t show a passport, it gets tricky, as Mazanke has seen time and again in over 30 years of working in migration.
“There are many states that are not ethnically homogeneous,” Mazanke points out. As an example, he cites Kurds, who may originate from Turkey, but also from Iran or Syria. “This means that sometimes it is not at all clear which country a person comes from.” In such cases, it is helpful to have other points of reference for the person’s identity: this could be documents such as a military service card or driver’s license, but also witness statements made during proceedings before the
“Ultimately, however, you always need a country that declares its willingness to accept the person in question,” Mazanke points out.
Deportations are only a last resort
From the perspective of the head of the Berlin immigration authority, the decisive factor is to encourage people to leave voluntarily rather than through forced deportations. Mazanke recalls that in 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic began, around 6,000 people who had no chance of receiving a residence permit voluntarily left the German capital. In the same period of time, however, only 1,000 were deported.
In other words, the ratio between those who left Berlin voluntarily and those who were forced to return to their country of origin was six to one. Looking at this year’s figures so far, Mazanke expects 15,000 voluntary returnees and 1,700 deportations for 2025.
The federal government is also fully aware of what needs to be done to get more people who have no realistic prospects of staying in Germany to leave voluntarily. “We want to provide more support for those who choose to return voluntarily by strengthening incentives and providing counselling,” reads the government’s coalition agreement. It goes on to say: “If this does not happen voluntarily, the state must enforce the obligation to leave.” By this, it refers to forced deportations.
This article was originally written in German.
