The ongoing assault against migrants and refugees serves as a lever for capitalist governments to eliminate democratic rights, suspend basic human rights, and establish dictatorship. This applies to both the United States and the European Union.<\/p>\n
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Poland’s Tomasz Siemoniak in front of the Polish border fence with Belarus [Photo by MSWiA_GOV_PL]<\/p>\n
Under Donald Trump, masked immigration officials\u2014the so-called \u201cICE Gestapo\u201d\u2014are terrorizing entire communities. They are arresting people who have lived in the United States for years or decades and deporting them to concentration camps at home and abroad from which there is no escape.<\/p>\n
The EU is no less committed than the United States in this respect. For years, European borders have been sealed off, refugees illegally turned back, imprisoned in inhumane camps, and deported to countries where they have no chance of survival. In the process the Mediterranean Sea has become the world\u2019s deadliest refugee route, claiming the lives of tens of thousands in the course of the past decade.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the interior ministers of the EU member states met in Copenhagen to discuss further tightening up migration and refugee policies. Since the meeting was informal, no official decisions were made, but the interior ministers agreed on basic issues:<\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s external borders is to be further sealed, and funding for the EU border agency Frontex tripled in the EU budget to a total of \u20ac34 billion.<\/p>\n
Rejected asylum seekers are to be deported more quickly and in greater numbers, including to war zones such as Syria and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Return centres are to be set up outside the EU\u2019s borders, from which refugees will be deported with the assistance of Frontex without ever having set foot on EU soil.<\/p>\n
Overall, border protection and deportations are to be better coordinated and tightened.<\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s tougher stance on migration is being fuelled not least by the change of government in Germany, now ruled by a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union CDU, Christian Social Union CSU, and Social Democratic Party SPD. Germany is\u2014in the words of the new Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt (CSU)\u2014no longer the \u201cbraking cabin,\u201d but rather the \u201clocomotive.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not strictly true, since Dobrindt\u2019s predecessor, Nancy Faeser (SPD), had already significantly advanced the expansion of Fortress Europe. She had ensured the faster deportation of rejected asylum seekers, expanded the list of \u201csafe countries of origin\u201d to include Algeria, Tunisia, India, and Morocco, restricted family reunification, tightened European asylum law, and\u2014in violation of the Schengen Agreement\u2014introduced controls at the German border.<\/p>\n
But Dobrindt has now gone much further. Barely in office, he deployed 3,000 additional federal police officers to tighten controls at the German border. In doing so, he violated existing law. Asylum seekers from so-called \u201csafe third countries\u201d were immediately deported without even being able to apply for asylum or residency.<\/p>\n
In addition, the border controls led to freight traffic jams and prevented thousands of cross-border commuters from getting to work on time. This resulted in considerable tensions with France and Poland, which responded with countermeasures and their own controls of their borders with Germany.<\/p>\n
Dobrindt has promised to turn \u201cthe migration wave into a migration turnaround\u201d and earned himself the nickname of \u201cMigration Sheriff\u201d for his aggressive approach. Last Friday, he invited the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and several European interior ministers to a \u201cMigration Summit\u201d on the Zugspitze, Germany\u2019s highest mountain, to provide \u201cimportant impetus for a tougher European migration policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Dobrindt, together with his Polish counterpart Tomasz Siemoniak, inspected the 190-kilometer-long, five-meter-high, barbed-wire, camera-secured fence that Poland erected along its border with Belarus to keep out refugees. It is guarded by 11,000 soldiers and border guards and cost over 600 million euros.<\/p>\n
At the end of June, after the Israeli attack on Iran, Dobrindt was also the first leading international politician to visit Israel and demonstratively expressed his solidarity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he would be legally obliged to arrest if Netanyahu visited Germany, following the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
It was no coincidence that Dobrindt was chosen as Interior Minister by the CDU\/CSU\/SPD coalition. He is known as an unscrupulous, chauvinistic agitator and could just as easily be a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, as Transport Minister under Angela Merkel, he pushed through the \u201cforeigner toll,\u201d which the CSU had placed at the center of its election campaign. A toll was to be levied exclusively for foreigners on German highways. Since this was incompatible with EU law, Dobrindt proposed a toll for everyone, for which German drivers would then be compensated by abolishing vehicle tax.<\/p>\n