After the bloody attack on two girls in Illerkirchberg, the question of deporting people after serious crimes is increasingly coming to the fore. She recently caught fire in another case from Illerkirchberg. Does the system need to be changed?
Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – In the dispute with the federal government about the deportation of refugees after serious crimes, Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Justice Marion Gentges is pushing for consequences. “We have to see where we can protect people’s safety, where we have to take more preventive action and be more consistent,” said the CDU politician after several unsuccessful attempts to deport a convicted rapist from Illerkirchberg to his Afghan homeland. In any case, the following applies: “What is legally possible, also enforce!”
States should not be excluded from deportations across the board, Gentges told the German Press Agency. Rather, it is important to differentiate more between cases and to ask what is reasonable for the offenders and those who are at risk of being deported and also for the security of the country. If there is no ban on deportation for a criminal or a dangerous person after the case has been examined by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), everything must be tried to actually enforce what is legally possible. It is expressly about decisions in individual cases and in the case of highly dangerous individual perpetrators. “What we can do for security, we must do,” said the minister.
Your Ministry of Justice has been campaigning for months in Berlin for the deportation of a man from Afghanistan who was involved in the rape of a girl in an asylum center in Illerkirchberg three years ago. He was sentenced in 2020 but is now free. Gentges wrote to Berlin in February 2022 to advocate for the man to be deported to his country of origin, Afghanistan. “In my opinion, deportations to Afghanistan of perpetrators and people who have committed serious crimes should be resumed quickly and the necessary efforts made as soon as possible,” says one of the letters to Interior Minister Nancy Faser (SPD).
Gentges also warns of the consequences if the man were not deported: “The social reception room that awaits the person concerned after his release from prison is unfavorable, especially since the offender has no future prospects in Germany,” she wrote to Faeser on February 8, 2022.
As soon as foreigners commit a crime, they have to reckon with a so-called expulsion in Germany and ultimately deportation. The number of expulsions of convicted foreigners has been increasing for years, but there is still an enormous gap between those who are obliged to leave the country and those who are actually deported. Sometimes travel documents are missing or invalid. However, nobody can be deported without a clarified identity. Then again, the countries of origin refuse to take in those who have been expelled. The state of health or education can also be reasons.
The Afghan should actually be deported after his release from prison. However, the federal government has suspended deportations to Afghanistan since August 2021. The reason for this is the security situation on site. According to the Residence Act, a foreigner should not be deported to another country if, among other things, there is a specific risk to life, limb or freedom there. After a short time in detention pending deportation, the man was released and brought back to Illerkirchberg of all places, the scene of the crime.
Gentges warned that a strong state is needed in order not to jeopardize social cohesion. The case of the Afghan national is an example of the fact that there are not enough options when it comes to deporting criminals after serious crimes. “This is an unacceptable state of affairs. We can no longer explain it to people. Considering all the circumstances, deportation would have been justified in this case,” added the CDU politician. She doubts that Faeser had no choice. “In my opinion, the Federal Interior Minister’s hands were not tied,” said Gentges. It had been decided by a court of law that there was no ban on deportation.
While she knows her party friend, Interior Minister Thomas Strobl, is behind her, Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) is distant. He emphasized on Tuesday that it was not the country that decided where deportations could take place. FDP faction leader Hans-Ulrich Rülke is also clear: “Such people should be deported – no matter where,” he said. “Female criminals must not benefit from the fact that they would put themselves in danger in regions where they might be deported. If this danger exists, they should kindly behave decently. And if they still rape or commit other serious crimes, then it happens They are also fine with being deported.”
The number of deportations from Baden-Württemberg has recently increased again after falling during the corona pandemic. In 2019, according to earlier data from the Ministry of Justice, 2,648 people were returned to their home countries or to the EU country where they first entered the EU. In 2020 and 2021, on the other hand, there were 1,362 and 1,328 people, respectively, and in the current year 2022, 1,547 people had to return by the end of November.
