Berlin’s immigration authorities are moving to deport four young foreign residents on allegations related to participation in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, an unprecedented move that raises serious concerns over civil liberties in Germany.
The deportation orders, issued under German migration law, were made amid political pressure and over internal objections from the head of the state of Berlin’s immigration agency.
The internal strife arose because three of those targeted for deportation are citizens of European Union member states who normally enjoy freedom of movement between E.U. countries. None of the four has been convicted of any crimes.
“What we’re seeing here is straight out of the far right’s playbook,” said Alexander Gorski, a lawyer representing two of the protesters. “You can see it in the U.S. and Germany, too: Political dissent is silenced by targeting the migration status of protesters.”
IIRC with EU citizens they have to argue threat to public safety. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if this thing stops at some district-level Berlin court, Berlin’s courts are way saner than its administration. “Threat to public safety” can be incredibly low-bar or quite high bar, this would be a high bar case. Low bar would be stuff like “you’re unemployed and homeless, go back to your home country and file for welfare there”.
Can’t really bonk the federation for this it plainly doesn’t have the authority to give orders to Berlin’s immigration authorities, this is the state of Berlin doing shit, not the federal government.
Well to EU, the federal government is responsible. If they don’t have authority to intervene on behalf of EU-citizens rights being violated, it in itself would be treaty violation. Member states have duty to police and administer the rights. EU doesn’t care is state federal or not, the singular member state entity is responsible to EU and it is up to member state to domestically organize so that treaties are followed.
The affected people can challenge the decision before court: State courts, federal courts, ultimately the ECJ. For the federation to get involved in the administration of the state of Berlin, Berlin would have to ignore court rulings or such to allow the federation to trigger Article 37 GG, which is actually not too dissimilar to how things work on the EU level. Unlike on the EU level, within Germany that clause has never been triggered: Practically speaking the federal constitutional court would first have to have its authority ignored, and then work out how that article actually works in detail because it’s unspecific AF.