Migrants are deliberately injuring themselves or behaving abusively to get thrown off deportation flights, the chairman of a major German police union has claimed.
Andreas Roßkopf, chairman of the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP), said some migrants who are about to be deported behave so badly that pilots refuse to take them.
“Many people subject to deportation behave abusively as soon as they reach the airport,” he told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
They behave so negatively that the flight captain often has to abort the repatriation in order to show consideration for the other passengers. Some even injure themselves at the airport to avoid being deported.
Following Saturday’s mass stabbing in Solingen, in which a failed Syrian asylum seeker killed three people and injured eight more, the GdP has demanded more places in deportation detention centres. It has also called for more charter flights to handle the number of people who need to be deported, especially as some deportations take multiple attempts.
“In our opinion, people should be taken into custody pending deportation quickly after a failed repatriation,” Roßkopf said. “That would enable another attempt at deportation. However, there are not enough places in detention pending deportation in Germany.”
“They must be significantly increased if we want to increase the number of deportations, for example via charter flights. The federal states have a duty here.”
However, he acknowledged that charter flights are difficult to arrange. “Charter flights mean a considerable amount of extra work—they are much more expensive and require more staff.”
Yet deportations on charter flights are also easier since “there are no other passengers on board.”
The suspect in the Solingen attack, Issa Al H., is a 26-year-old Syrian who is accused of being a member of the Islamist terrorist organisation IS. He reportedly entered Germany as an asylum seeker at the end of 2022. His application was turned down yet he evaded deportation.
