On 21 April, Germany will deport me – an EU citizen convicted of no crime – for standing with Palestine | Kasia Wlaszczyk
www.theguardian.com
Four of us have received letters from the state telling us to leave or be removed. This is a terrifying illustration of Germany’s lurch to the right, says Kasia Wlaszczyk

In the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since I’m a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from another EU country is practically impossible. I contacted a lawyer and, given the lack of substantial legal reasoning behind the order, we filed a lawsuit against it, after which I didn’t think much of it.

I later found out that three other people active in the Palestine movement in Berlin, Roberta Murray, Shane O’Brien and Cooper Longbottom, received the same letters. Murray and O’Brien are Irish nationals, Longbottom is American. We understood this as yet another intimidation tactic from the state, which has also violently suppressed protests and arrested activists, and expected a long and dreary but not at all urgent process of fighting our deportation orders.

Then, at the beginning of March, each of our lawyers received on our behalf another letter, declaring that we are to be given until 21 April to voluntarily leave the country or we will be forcibly removed. The letters cite charges arising from our involvement in protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of the charges have yet led to a court hearing, yet the deportation letters conclude that we are a threat to public order and national security.

  • @[email protected]English
    0•16 days ago

    Then charge them with conspiracy to commit vandalism or whatever. They have so far shown no evidence that they entered the building, much less did any vandalism or threats, and no charges have been made.

    If you allow people to be deported without due process then you’ve given the power of arbitrary deportation of anyone legally in the country to the state. Look at how this is going in the US, we sent someone to a Salvadoran gulag over a tattoo and now we can’t even get them back home.

    Do you really want to set this precedent and give that power to the afd if/when they gain power?

    • @[email protected]English
      0•16 days ago

      Ok, let me explain how the german system works:

      • After the vandalism, some “protestors” were arrested and some protestors tried to stop the police from arresting them. Those four were part of that and that is a crime.
      • If you take a look at the relevant news about this, officials of course said that they will be charged
      • Police will investigate the crime and they also might show up at your doorstep and search your room or take your phone and computers.
      • Prosecutors will build a case from this evidence. That will take some time as all evidence has to be collected and so on
      • If prosecutors are deciding to charge you after reviewing the evidence, you will get a letter in the mail with those charges
      • You will also get a date for your trial. That date will be in most cases several months or years after the crime itself. Courts are kind of overloaded, but the state is also giving you time to search for a lawyer and time to prepare a defense
      • Then the trial will happen

      There is due to privacy concern no communication about the charges to the public. I know that the US works differently, but we do not have a public list that says “Hans Müller charged for driving drunk” , “Peter Meier charged for beating his wife” or “Claudia Maschmeyer charged for bank robbery”.

      So where are we:

      • They have commited crimes for political reasons
      • There might be a charge being prepared or they even might have it. We don’t know - officials are not allowed to talk about it and the protestors are obviously not telling the truth. So we do know nothing.
      • They keeping to commit crimes for political reasons
      • The State is using a law to kick out foreigners who are commiting crimes

      And there is due process: They had their time to follow the order (as you can read in the article) and they are able to sue against that order.

      • @[email protected]English
        0•16 days ago

        Obelix, in case you have been involved in the occupation of the university that time, it is likely that you have been filmed by the police. If this is true, your chances are pretty low. Even when you behaved non-violent. There is a saying in German: mitgehangen, mitgefangen - it is like you would be a wolf in a pack and although you would stay outside the fence and not participate in the killing of sheep, you are done anyway.

        Therefore my suggestion: if you are a foreigner and the police gives a final call to leave the place, follow the order of the police. Otherwise another saying applies: Dummheit schützt vor Strafe nicht (ignorance is no excuse).

        BTW, the situation will get way darker when the AfD will be in power, and what the CDU has done until now, I have to admit that it does not look good for many people.

      • @[email protected]English
        0•16 days ago

        The deportation process shouldn’t precede the criminal trial, as seems to be the case here. That would probably violate the EU charter and ECHR.

          • @[email protected]English
            0•16 days ago

            It should though, otherwise you believe “guilty until proven innocent” is valid, and you are a fascist.

          • @[email protected]English
            0•16 days ago

            Oh but it does. So much so, that even the clerk who was given the task remonstrated. You can look it up here: https://fragdenstaat.de/artikel/exklusiv/2025/04/proteste-berlin-ausweisung/

            Her reasoning:

            According to § 6 para. 2 sentence 1 FreizügG/EU, the fact of a criminal conviction alone is not sufficient to justify the aforementioned decisions or measures. Only criminal convictions that have not yet been expunged from the Federal Central Criminal Register may be taken into account, and only to the extent that the circumstances on which they are based indicate personal conduct that poses a current threat to the freedom of movement.

            • @[email protected]English
              0•16 days ago

              That’s incorrect, let me post the german law:

              (1) 1Der Verlust des Rechts nach § 2 Abs. 1 kann unbeschadet des § 2 Absatz 4 und des § 5 Absatz 4 nur aus Gründen der öffentlichen Ordnung, Sicherheit oder Gesundheit (Artikel 45 Absatz 3, Artikel 52 Absatz 1 des Vertrages über die Arbeitsweise der Europäischen Union) festgestellt und die Bescheinigung über das Daueraufenthaltsrecht oder die Aufenthaltskarte oder Daueraufenthaltskarte eingezogen werden. 2Aus den in Satz 1 genannten Gründen kann auch die Einreise verweigert werden. 3Die Feststellung aus Gründen der öffentlichen Gesundheit kann nur erfolgen, wenn es sich um Krankheiten mit epidemischem Potenzial im Sinne der einschlägigen Rechtsinstrumente der Weltgesundheitsorganisation und sonstige übertragbare, durch Infektionserreger oder Parasiten verursachte Krankheiten handelt, sofern gegen diese Krankheiten Maßnahmen im Bundesgebiet getroffen werden. 4Krankheiten, die nach Ablauf einer Frist von drei Monaten ab dem Zeitpunkt der Einreise auftreten, stellen keinen Grund für eine Feststellung nach Satz 1 dar.

              (2) 1Die Tatsache einer strafrechtlichen Verurteilung genügt für sich allein nicht, um die in Absatz 1 genannten Entscheidungen oder Maßnahmen zu begründen. 2Es dürfen nur im Bundeszentralregister noch nicht getilgte strafrechtliche Verurteilungen und diese nur insoweit berücksichtigt werden, als die ihnen zu Grunde liegenden Umstände ein persönliches Verhalten erkennen lassen, das eine gegenwärtige Gefährdung der öffentlichen Ordnung darstellt. 3Es muss eine tatsächliche und hinreichend schwere Gefährdung vorliegen, die ein Grundinteresse der Gesellschaft berührt.

              (3) Bei der Entscheidung nach Absatz 1 sind insbesondere die Dauer des Aufenthalts des Betroffenen in Deutschland, sein Alter, sein Gesundheitszustand, seine familiäre und wirtschaftliche Lage, seine soziale und kulturelle Integration in Deutschland und das Ausmaß seiner Bindungen zum Herkunftsstaat zu berücksichtigen.

              (4) Eine Feststellung nach Absatz 1 darf nach Erwerb des Daueraufenthaltsrechts nur aus schwerwiegenden Gründen getroffen werden.

              (5) 1Eine Feststellung nach Absatz 1 darf bei Unionsbürgern und ihren Familienangehörigen, die ihren Aufenthalt in den letzten zehn Jahren im Bundesgebiet hatten, und bei Minderjährigen nur aus zwingenden Gründen der öffentlichen Sicherheit getroffen werden. 2Für Minderjährige gilt dies nicht, wenn der Verlust des Aufenthaltsrechts zum Wohl des Kindes notwendig ist. 3Zwingende Gründe der öffentlichen Sicherheit können nur dann vorliegen, wenn der Betroffene wegen einer oder mehrerer vorsätzlicher Straftaten rechtskräftig zu einer Freiheits- oder Jugendstrafe von mindestens fünf Jahren verurteilt oder bei der letzten rechtskräftigen Verurteilung Sicherungsverwahrung angeordnet wurde, wenn die Sicherheit der Bundesrepublik Deutschland betroffen ist oder wenn vom Betroffenen eine terroristische Gefahr ausgeht.

              (6) Die Entscheidungen oder Maßnahmen, die den Verlust des Aufenthaltsrechts oder des Daueraufenthaltsrechts betreffen, dürfen nicht zu wirtschaftlichen Zwecken getroffen werden.

              (7) Wird der Pass, Personalausweis oder sonstige Passersatz ungültig, so kann dies die Aufenthaltsbeendigung nicht begründen.

              (8) 1Vor der Feststellung nach Absatz 1 soll der Betroffene angehört werden. 2Die Feststellung bedarf der Schriftform.

              (9) Die Absätze 1 bis 8 finden auf Personen, die ein Recht zur Einreise und zum Aufenthalt im Bundesgebiet nach § 3a Absatz 1 haben, entsprechende Anwendung.

              https://www.buzer.de/6_FreizuegG-EU.htm

              So, what does this say: Paragraph 1 says that you can lose the Freizügigkeit only because of “öffentliche Ordnung” , “öffentliche Sicherheit” and “health” (think Covid restrictions).

              Paragraph 2 is the one in question and that says that you can’t lose the Freizügigkeit because you are sentenced by a court. You have to be a danger to society (“gegenwärtige Gefährdung der öffentlichen Ordnung”) and just a criminal conviction doesn’t say that. This paragraph doesn’t say that you can’t lose the Freizügigkeit without a court order, it basically prevents the state from deporting every foreigner who commits a crime.

              If you read the FragdenStaat text based on this knowledge, it is exactly what happens. The clerk gets asked to start with the process to take away their Freizügigkeit and says that he can’t do this because there are no criminal convictions. And then the higher ups are saying “you don’t need a criminal conviction, our order is based on the police files that prove the danger to society”. So yeah, read the law and be sure to read it correctly.

              (And since they have a lawyer that can explain that to them, the whole Guardian article is trash)