Migrants heading to a refugee camp
According to the Federal Government, as of October 30, 2019, there were 4,916 asylum seekers in Germany who had already been deported from the country twice since 2012 or had left voluntarily under orders from German immigration authorities and were now applying for protection for the third time. Another 1,023 people did so for the fourth time, and 294 for the fifth.
The publication "Russkaya Germaniya" provides a characteristic example – the "odyssey" of 46-year-old refugee from Lebanon, Ibrahim Miri, whose family, whose citizenship has still not been determined by the competent authorities of the FRG, has been "entrenched" in Bremen since 1980. Today, the Miri clan consists of about 30 families with a total membership of 2,600 people, of whom only a few can be considered well-integrated in Germany.
According to police, the Miri clan is closely linked to organized crime and has a mafia structure. Clan members engage in racketeering, drug and arms trafficking, and also "protect" prostitution in red-light districts, not only in Bremen but also in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Berlin. The current clan leader and former boss of the Arab biker gang "Mongols MC Bremen," Ibrahim Miri, was convicted 19 times between 1989 and 2014, including for robbery, theft, drug trafficking, and other crimes, including violent ones.
In July of this year, through immense efforts by the President of the Federal Police, Dieter Romann, and personally by the German Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, Ibrahim Miri was provided with a Lebanese passport, then placed on board an aircraft under the escort of GSG 9 special forces and deported to Beirut on a charter flight paid for by the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The joy of German law enforcement was intense but short-lived.
Already at the end of October, Miri showed up in Bremen as if nothing had happened and, through his lawyer, filed an application for asylum. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) displayed unprecedented speed: whereas asylum applications usually take months or even years to process, Miri's application was reviewed and rejected within a few days as "manifestly unfounded," and he himself, on the personal order of Interior Minister Seehofer, was arrested and placed behind bars.
Moreover, Minister Seehofer signed an order "On Strengthening Border Controls," according to which "from November 7, 2019, all persons entering Germany despite entry restrictions imposed on them may be stopped at Germany's borders, and those who, despite the ban, enter the country illegally and apply for asylum must remain in custody pending a decision on the accelerated asylum procedure."
On November 18, Miri appealed the BAMF's rejection to the Administrative Court of Bremen, simultaneously requesting a stay of his deportation until a court decision. On November 22, the court reviewed and rejected his appeal, and on November 23, the Interior Ministry announced through the media that Ibrahim Miri had been finally deported to Lebanon.
But if expelling a single Miri required the personal intervention of a federal minister and the involvement of BAMF leadership, is it surprising that thousands of individuals far less "famous" than the boss of the Lebanese mafia in Bremen return unhindered to the Germany that expelled them? And the media statements reassuring their audience that the number of such persistent individuals is "less than 1% of all refugees, of whom, according to Destatis, 1.78 million arrived in the country from 2010 to 2018" are not impressive.