Germany does not have a US-style Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Still, the issue of deportations has become more prominent: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Bavaria proposed creating an “Asylum, Tracing and Deportation group” (AFA) within the Bavarian police, explicitly inspired by US practice. Meanwhile, successive federal governments have introduced reforms aimed at making it easier to remove people deemed to have “poor prospects of staying.”
The number of removals has risen. According to the Interior Ministry, 21,311 deportations were carried out between January and November 2025, a 16% increase on the same period in 2024. From 2023 to 2024 there was a 22% increase. In addition, more than 30,000 people “self-deported” in 2025 by leaving voluntarily after receiving a Grenzübertrittsbescheinigung, a notice requiring them to leave by a set date.
Who can be deported?
– Generally, any immigrant without residency status or any asylum seeker whose application has been rejected must leave Germany by a deadline (for asylum seekers typically one month). Failure to do so can lead to deportation.
– Some people receive a tolerated status (Duldung) when deportation is blocked for specific reasons. Common grounds for a Duldung include:
– Uncertainty about identity
– A dependent family relationship with someone who has tolerated status
– Humanitarian or medical reasons
– Having found employment in Germany
About 180,000 people in Germany hold tolerated status.
The decision to deport is taken by local immigration authorities, which first check for legal obstacles. If none are found, a deportation date is set (often not disclosed to the person). Authorities can order detention before deportation if they judge someone likely to evade removal or if the person has previously avoided deportation.
Deportation is a bureaucratic and diplomatic process. Authorities often need to verify nationality, secure travel documents, and negotiate readmission with other countries. That administrative and diplomatic work, as well as arranging logistics, makes deportations complex.
How deportations are carried out
– The federal police execute deportations ordered by state immigration authorities.
– Some deportations are collective: entire chartered flights to specific countries are organized. In 2024 around 7,300 of roughly 20,100 deportations were by chartered flight. Chartering aircraft and providing police escorts is expensive.
– Typical procedure: potential deportees may be summoned to an immigration office where federal police inform them they will be deported, escort them home to collect belongings, and take them directly to the airport.
– Alternatively, police sometimes arrest people at home early in the morning. Federal officers wear uniforms and must carry identification and give their names if asked—unlike the masked ICE operations often seen in the US.
– Officially, people scheduled for deportation are allowed phone contact; last-minute legal interventions can sometimes stop a deportation. However, there are reports of phones being confiscated and of stressful or harmful outcomes—for example, disabled people removed in ways that leave dependents without primary carers.
Measures to speed up deportations
German law has been changed several times in the past decade with the stated aim of accelerating removals:
– 2015: Expanded grounds to detain someone before deportation.
– 2016: Narrowed the medical exemption for deportation so only chronic or life-threatening conditions generally prevent removal.
– 2019: Broadened the list of conditions under which people considered likely to flee can be detained preemptively; it also criminalized passing on information about planned deportations.
– 2022: Allowed preemptive detention of asylum-seekers categorized as dangerous for up to six months.
– 2024: Gave police the power to search other rooms in a residence when removing someone.
Impact and debate
Officials including Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his predecessor Olaf Scholz have supported measures to remove legal barriers to deportation. But researchers caution that tougher laws do not automatically make deportations more efficient. Svenja Schurade, a researcher at the University of Göttingen, says the reforms have tended to increase social exclusion and precariousness rather than streamlining returns. Practical obstacles—proof of identity, diplomatic agreements, and logistics—continue to make deportations lengthy and costly.
Edited by: Rina Goldenberg