More than 11,100 Syrians ordered to leave Germany remain in the country after deportations of Syrian criminals and rejected asylum seekers stalled earlier this year because authorities cannot obtain the documents needed to return them to Syria.
According to reporting by Welt am Sonntag, no further deportations involving Syrians classified as criminals or security risks have taken place since January 21, despite promises by Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition government to tighten migration enforcement.
The main obstacle is the lack of replacement travel documents for Syrians without valid identification papers.
Germany carried out its first deportations to Syria in more than a decade in December 2025 and January 2026, when four convicted criminals were removed after years in which deportations had been suspended because of the Syrian civil war.
But officials now say the process has effectively ground to a halt.
Roman Poseck, interior minister of the German state of Hesse, said none of the 533 Syrians currently facing deportation there can be returned because Syrian authorities have not issued the necessary documents this year.
Bavaria’s Interior Ministry also confirmed that Berlin had taken centralized control of the deportation process, including efforts to secure Syrian paperwork.
The issue has increased pressure on the German government as migration remains one of the country’s most divisive political debates.
By the end of 2023, around 973,000 Syrians were living in Germany, with estimates now placing the figure close to one million. Syrians remain the largest migrant group to arrive during the 2015 migration crisis.
At the same time, new arrivals continue. Around 3,850 Syrians submitted first-time asylum applications in Germany during the first four months of this year.
Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government and the emergence of Syria’s new leadership under Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as al-Jolani, German officials have explored possible cooperation with Damascus on migration matters.
Merz has also suggested reviewing the protected status of some Syrian refugees as part of a broader reassessment of Germany’s Syria policy.
