Far-left German opposition slams police over handling of deportations
Germany's opposition The Left party has slammed the authorities over the way the country is conducting deportations, as the number of people forced to leave the country surpassed 6,000 in the first quarter.
"I am aware of several deportations in which the police acted brutally and without any empathy," Clara Bünger, the far-left party's spokeswoman on refugee policy, told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland media group in comments published Friday.
"We are talking about families being torn apart in cold blood or sick people being literally kidnapped from hospital and carted off to deportation flights," Bünger said.
She said it appeared that authorities were acting according to the idea that "you can do almost anything to people who are required to leave the country."
Her comments come after Germany deported 6,151 individuals in the first three months of the year, according to the response to a parliamentary inquiry by Bünger's party from Tuesday.
In 2024, some 20,100 people were deported in total.
Germany's new conservative-led government, which took office on May 6, has vowed to crack down on irregular migration.
While it has since intensified border checks and allowed police to turn away people looking to claim asylum, the first quarter figures are attributable to the previous centre-left administration, which also toughened its stance on migration amid a series of attacks attributed to suspects with migrant roots.
Most people deported in the first quarter of 2025 were deported to Turkey, at 502.
This was followed by deportations to Georgia (454), France (333), Spain (325) and Serbia (291).
A total of 1,715 people were deported under the EU's Dublin rules, which stipulates that in general the EU country the refugee first enters is responsible for processing their application for asylum.
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