A controversial debate in Germany over whether to resume deportations of convicted criminals to Syria and Afghanistan was the main topic of discussions as interior ministers from the country's 16 states convened just outside of Berlin on Wednesday evening.
The state ministers are pushing to resume deportations to both countries despite gruesome records of serious human rights abuses for the regimes in power there.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has previously backed such a change, and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck voiced his support on Wednesday, at least in cases where individuals are suspected terrorists or convicted of very serious crimes like murder.
Deportations have been a hot-button issue in Germany since a policeman was killed by a knife-wielding Afghan migrant during an attack in the city of Mannheim last month.
Refugee advocacy organizations and far-left politicians have criticized the proposals, contending that forcibly sending people back to Syria or Afghanistan clashes with Germany's constitution and its commitments under international law.
Asylum and immigration policy are expected to dominate the agenda for the three-day gathering in Potsdam, a Berlin suburb.
Those topics are also expected to be high on the agenda when Scholz meets with the premiers of Germany's states on Thursday in Berlin.
"Anyone who commits serious crimes here must leave the country, even if they come from Afghanistan," said Hamburg's interior minister, Andy Grote, of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
Michael Stübgen, the interior minister in the eastern state of Brandenburg, argued that Germany can justify talks with the Taliban, the radical Islamist movement that rules Afghanistan, and also that the security situation has improved in parts of war-torn Syria controlled by President Bashar al-Assad.
Germany has not deported anyone to Afghanistan since August 2021, when Taliban forces seized control in Kabul.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is expected to give her state-level colleagues a closed-door briefing on ongoing efforts by her ministry to determine how to carry out those deportations.
"We are negotiating confidentially with various countries in order to open up ways to make deportations to Afghanistan possible again," Faeser confirmed in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker newspaper. "And we want to consistently expel and deport Islamist threats."
Outsourcing asylum proceedings?
Faeser's ministry is also looking into the possibility of doing asylum proceedings in a third country outside the European Union, a controversial proposal that has gained traction with conservative and hard-right politicians in Germany and across Europe.
The United Kingdom has signed a deal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda while their claims are processed, while Italy has plans to set up a similar arrangement with Albania.
More than 300 advocacy groups and international organizations published an open letter addressed to Scholz on Wednesday decrying that possibility.
"Please issue a clear rejection of plans to outsource asylum procedures," the authors demand in the letter published on Wednesday. The signatories include Amnesty International Germany, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and the migrant advocacy group Pro Asyl.
The authors of the open letter warn that serious human rights abuses are foreseeable if asylum proceedings are outsourced to countries outside the EU. They argue that receiving asylum-seekers and integrating them into society can work smoothly with greater cooperation.
"Plans to deport refugees to non-European third countries or to carry out asylum procedures outside the EU, on the other hand, do not work in practice, are extremely expensive and pose a threat to the rule of law," the letters states.
According to the authors, current debate about the plan in both Germany and other EU countries is already having an impact.
"Such plans often cause great fear among refugees and increase the risk of self-harm and suicide," according to the letter.
Leaders of major Protestant Christian organizations also voiced their opposition to third-country asylum proceedings on Wednesday, and expressed concern about deporting people to Afghanistan and Syria.
The plans to outsource asylum procedures to third countries "lack solidarity and are questionable in terms of human rights," said the president of the Protestant charity group Bread for the World, Dagmar Pruin.
"Shirking one's own responsibility for people in need by burdening other, poorer countries with the task is irresponsible, unlawful and unrealistic. It de facto abolishes refugee law," added Anna-Nicole Heinrich, the president of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, the umbrella organization for mainstream Protestant denominations in the country.
Benefit cuts for Ukrainians?
Another controversial proposal is potentially cutting the welfare benefits paid to Ukrainian refugees in Germany, a move backed by some state ministers.
Currently, a special exemption has allowed Ukrainians to claim full long-term unemployment benefits instead of the more limited benefits available under Germany's Asylum Seekers Benefits Act.
Some conservative politicians, such as the interior minister of the eastern state of Brandenburg, Michael Stübgen, have argued that the more generous benefits have made Ukrainian refugees more reluctant to seek work.
Scholz's coalition government has rejected the proposal, and the German Association of Cities came out against it on Wednesday as well.
