Germany to deport four Berlin residents for their Palestine solidarity activism

Germany to deport four Berlin residents for their Palestine solidarity activism: 

“The audacity with which German authorities bend and undermine the law is shameful” 

Berlin, Germany – 2 April 2025, The ELSC calls on the Berlin Immigration Office to withdraw its deportation orders against four Berlin residents (two Irish, one Polish and one US national) for their involvement in protesting the ongoing Genocide in Palestine and more specifically Germany’s complicity. This move is part of the larger repression against Palestine solidarity movement and aims to crack down on dissent.  

Giovanni Fassina, Director of the ELSC comments: “The audacity with which German authorities bend and undermine the law should not surprise us at this point. However, it remains shameful. We have witnessed this time and time again: German authorities are now routinely making up baseless accusations to justify increasingly harsh measures against the Palestine solidarity movement. The executive organs are testing how far they can go in overstepping legal boundaries and violating fundamental rights, knowing full well they don’t need to fear any consequences other than court rulings declaring their measures as unlawful.” 

The order is proclaimed to come into effect on 21. April 2024. As an investigation by journalist Hanno Hauenstein for The Intercept uncovered it came on direct command from Berlin Senate’s Interior Department, a governmental body under the authority of Berlin’s right-wing mayor Kai Wegner. Civil servants within the Immigration office refused to sign the order. They questioned its legality regarding the freedom of movement of the three EU citizens, as well as the substantiality and sufficiency of the accusations. However, they were overruled by Berlin Senate’s Interior Department.   

The order is based on various allegations. However, none of the accused is convicted of any crime or in a criminal proceeding but it is alleged that they would pose public safety threats. A team of lawyers including Alexander Gorski has now issued legal action against the deportation orders which include an urgent motion to stop the forcible deportation after 21. April 2024.  

BERLIN’S LONG HISTORY OF ANTI-PALESTINIAN REPRESSION:  

While some draw parallels to Trump’s recent deportation orders and ICE raids, Germany has its own deeply entrenched history of authoritarian anti-Palestinian repression. Berlin under Mayor Kai Wagner has aggressively continued and intensified this pattern of systematic state violence against Palestinians and the movement in solidarity with Palestine. 

Wegner’s notorious anti-Palestinian statements include: Genocide denial, calling for and imposing all-out bans on demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, extreme police violence and harsh punishments on protesters, an effective ban on wearing symbols of Palestine solidarity in public spaces. Wegner has also repeatedly urged Berlin’s authorities to take extreme and illegal measures, for example the repression against the Palaestina Kongress. In the course of which an illegal Schengen visa ban was imposed on speakers of the event including world-renowned surgent Ghassan Abu-Sittah, an eyewitness to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The ELSC managed to overturn the ban and expose the complete illegality of the order. ELSC also managed to overturn other unlawful measures resulting from pressure of Berlin’s authorities such as the cancellation of the event’s organisers bank account at Sparkasse Berlin.  

Recently Kai Wegner raised international notoriety after publicly pressuring Freie Universität Berlin and even a national newspaper jungeWelt  to ban UN-Special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese from publicly speaking. This resulted in several police raids at the university as well as the newspaper’s offices. 

Wegner is not alone; we have documented various calls by high-ranking officials in his government routinely issue.   

In early May 2025, the European Legal Support Center will present the first comprehensive Database of anti-Palestinian repression in Europe. Our monitor department has collected 2032 incidents of anti-Palestinian repression in Europe, 736 of them in Germany alone. An abundance of these incidents of anti-Palestinian repression are a direct result of the Berlin government’s anti-Palestinian repression orders.