In the early hours of July 22, the Qassim family, including four young children, were violently awakened. Police officers immediately took them to the Leipzig\/Halle Airport, where they were forced to board a plane to Baghdad for deportation to Iraq.<\/p>\n
The Qassim family [Photo by permission]<\/p>\n
That same morning, the Potsdam Administrative Court granted an emergency application to stop their deportation, ruling that their obligation to leave the country was invalid. The family should therefore be allowed to stay in Germany. The court ruling, however, came while they were already on a plane to Baghdad.<\/p>\n
The deportation of the Yazidi family, who fled Iraq in 2014 from the terrorist militia ISIS, is an example of the brutal tightening of asylum and deportation policies under Germany\u2019s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU). The German government, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), headed by former BlackRock employee Friedrich Merz (CDU), has declared war on the working class, with refugees first in line.<\/p>\n
The Qassim family had lived in Lychen, in the state of Brandenburg, for three years. They had integrated themselves into society; the children attended school, with the youngest in daycare. The administrative court\u2019s ruling, scheduled for the end of July, had been expected since April. However, the Saxon Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) deliberately created a fait accompli before the ruling arrived. The family was deported to Baghdad on Tuesday as part of a group of 43 people.<\/p>\n
Deportations have increased rapidly under the Merz government. In the first half of 2025, there were 11,800 deportations, 2,300 more than in the same period last year (9,500). Last year, under Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), deportations had already reached a record number of 20,000.<\/p>\n
Regarding Tuesday\u2019s deportation flight, Thuringia\u2019s Justice Minister Beate Meissner (CDU) stated that it was \u201ccompleted without incident.\u201d As if speaking on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), she added, \u201cOur message is clear: Anyone who does not have a right of residence must leave our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s lawyer is now trying to secure their repatriation. However, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has classified the Yazidi family, whose house in the Sinjar Mountains was destroyed by ISIS and whose relatives and friends were murdered, not as members of a persecuted minority, but as \u201ceconomic refugees.\u201d The entire process exemplifies the bottomless mendacity and hypocrisy of the German ruling class.<\/p>\n
Just 10 years ago, in the summer of 2015, when the idea of stationing the Bundeswehr in northern Iraq was being discussed, the case of the Yazidis was exploited relentlessly for propaganda purposes. It was argued that it was absolutely necessary to bring the Bundeswehr to Iraq so it could defend not only the Kurdish Peshmerga but also the Yazidis against the advance of ISIS.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf genocide can only be prevented with German weapons, then we must help,\u201d declared then-Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (now head of the European Commission). Referring to the \u201cattempted genocide against the Yazidis,\u201d she trumpeted at the Munich Security Conference in February 2015: \u201cIndifference is and remains not an option!\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Yazidis like the Qassims in Germany are now classified as \u201ceconomic refugees.\u201d The Potsdam Administrative Court found that serious doubts exist about the legality of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees\u2019 rejection of the asylum application. The situation in Iraq, and especially in Sinjar, remains far from safe for Yazidis.<\/p>\n