\u201cThey shouted \u2018police\u2019 loudly and shone their torches in our faces,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we\u2019re afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the federal interior ministry said the deportation flight with the Qassims and 37 others \u201cdemonstrates that we are continuing to push forward resolutely with a migration<\/a> policy shift\u201d.<\/p>\n Last May, Germany\u2019s centre-right Christian Democratic Union<\/a> (CDU) took office promising a tougher approach to migration and asylum, imposing checks on all German borders and promising \u201cmore pressure on returns\u201d.<\/p>\n The shift is a response to two developments. The first: a series of fatal knife and car attacks in recent years where, in many cases, perpetrators were failed asylum application with overdue deportation orders.<\/p>\n Last week\u2019s flight, the statement said, deported \u201c14 single men, some of whom have a criminal record\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to carry out deportations,\u201d the ministry concluded, \u201cprovided they are legally and effectively possible.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no criminals in the Qassim family and, while doubtlessly effective, the legality of their deportation is in doubt.<\/p>\n The court ruling granted them leave to challenge the refusal of their asylum application.<\/p>\n The Brandenburg state refugee council denounced the dawn raid as a \u201cscandalous\u201d example of Germany<\/a>\u2019s new \u201cdeportation agenda, driven by the right wing\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that they are Kurdish Yazidis from northern Iraq should have prevented the rejection of their asylum application,\u201d it said. \u201cGermany recognised the Yazidi genocide and said we have a particular responsibility here as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n But German politicians, particularly in the CDU, say they feel a greater responsibility to their own voters. That leads to the second motivator for the migration pivot: an opinion poll which, this week saw the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD<\/a>) pull level with the CDU.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Germany increases border checks: Alexander Dobrindt oversees radical policy shiftOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n A decade ago, as Germany faced a growing refugee crisis, chancellor Angela Merkel<\/a> adopted a motivational \u201cwe can do this\u201d approach to the challenges of welcoming and integrating more than a million people annually.<\/p>\n Last Friday, her CDU successor Friedrich Merz<\/a> binned that legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cSome 10 years on we know that, in the [integration] context she meant … we clearly haven\u2019t managed it,\u201d he told journalists in Berlin.<\/p>\n As Merz spoke in the capital, his interior minister Alexander Dobrindt presided over a gathering of migration hardliners in his native Bavaria.<\/p>\n To the top of the Zugspitze, Germany\u2019s highest peak, Dobrindt invited counterparts from France, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark, as well as European Union<\/a> home affairs commissioner Magnus Brunner.<\/p>\n The informal gathering proposed greater use of drones at the EU\u2019s outer borders, ex-territorial \u201creturn centres\u201d for failed asylum seekers and the use of trade and development aid as leverage in negotiations over returns to third countries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are all concerned that overburdening our countries through illegal migration is contributing massively to the polarisation of society and want to push back against this,\u201d the ministers said in a concluding document. <\/p>\n Despite its pivot, Germany has shied away from backing more radical migration proposals circulating in Europe. <\/p>\n Last May, all of Dobrindt\u2019s Zugspitze guests backed a Danish-Italian demand for reform of the European Convention on Human Rights to \u201cmatch the challenge that we face today\u201d.<\/p>\n The paper warned that the convention, and the European court that oversees it, no longer reflect the realities of modern migration and, too often, results in \u201cthe protection of the wrong people\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"German](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Z6Y2LZQF75MOSD2UX5N473X6EI.jpg\")
German chancellor Friedrich Merz (right) and his interior minister Alexander Dobrindt. Photograph: Christian Mang\/Getty Images <\/p>\n