December 6th saw federal police in Aachen arrest a 37-year-old Lebanese man who had been living in Germany under an extraordinary web of false identities, highlighting once again the country’s ongoing struggles with migration control and failed deportations. The man—stopped during a routine check after arriving on a regional train from Belgium—presented “a Lebanese passport and a non-Schengen-valid Italian residence permit.”
The suspect has been known to authorities for years and is listed in the police database under “a total of 28 different names.” Officials say he had repeatedly come to police attention for violations of the Narcotics Act. His asylum application in Germany was “rejected without appeal in April 2025,” yet he re-entered the country. Officers immediately took him into custody with the stated aim of deporting him once again to Lebanon.
The arrest comes amid Germany’s inability to enforce its own immigration rules. Government data released in response to a parliamentary inquiry by AfD MP René Springer reveals that more than half of all planned deportations since 2020 have failed. Out of roughly 250,000 scheduled removals between 2020 and July 2025, nearly 146,000 were never carried out.
The failure rate has consistently exceeded 55%, peaking at 60% in 2023 and 60.5% in 2024. In the first seven months of 2025, authorities planned 35,489 deportations, but 20,982 could not be executed—a failure rate of 59.1%.
