*** Renewed arrests and deportations of people with German admission commitments in Islamabad ***
*** Foreign Office and Interior Ministry put asylum seekers under pressure ***
*** still no support for deported asylum seekers ***
Court-Won Entry for 47 People
• After massive pressure from the Administrative Court Berlin, the Foreign Office issued visas to 10 families.
• A total of 47 people, mostly women and children, arrived on Monday, 1 September in Hannover.
• Broken down by numbers, the situation is as follows: 10 families with a total of 47 people, including 20 women, 19 children, 8 men. 9 families had an admission commitment through the federal reception program, one family via the human rights list.
• All families had completed court proceedings.
• Among the arriving 10 families, there were eight female and two male main applicants, including a doctor who worked for the military, a well-known regime critic and writer, a scientist, and a karate athlete who previously represented Afghanistan in national and international competitions.
Renewed Arrests and Deportations of People with Admission Commitments
On Tuesday, 2 September, and Wednesday, 3 September, there were renewed arrests in GIZ accommodations in Islamabad.
22 cases of arrests are currently known to us, of which 8 have already been deported to Afghanistan (as of 03.09, midnight local time).
This brings the total number of deportations to 218 people.
The renewed raids in GIZ accommodations came just two days after Wadephul announced that he had agreed with his Pakistani counterpart that no further arrests were to be expected until the end of the year.
Foreign Office and Interior Ministry Put Asylum Seekers Under Pressure
• There are now more than 30 urgent orders from the Administrative Court Berlin, obliging the federal government to immediately issue visas or, in some cases, to complete the procedure as quickly as possible and decide on the visa application. A large part of the orders have already been confirmed by the Higher Administrative Court.
• The federal government, however, is attempting to prevent the implementation of positive court rulings. Instead of changing course after so many judicial defeats, taking the judiciary’s directives seriously, and acting in cases that have not yet reached the court, the opposite is happening:
• The federal government actively puts pressure on asylum seekers who have successfully claimed their rights. Admission commitments of the plaintiffs are questioned or even withdrawn, and families are evicted from GIZ accommodations. Here are two recent cases from Pakistan:
Case 1: A 31-year-old journalist and women’s rights activist and her two children were, based on the admission commitment from February 2024, granted an urgent order by the Administrative Court Berlin on 24 July 2025 that visas must be issued. The Foreign Office’s appeal was rejected on 22 August 2025. At no stage of the procedure were security concerns or doubts about the admission commitment raised. At the end of August, meanwhile, the admission notice underlying the visa was revoked – because the federal government suddenly wanted to reassess the danger. A lawsuit and an urgent application against this revocation are already pending. But this procedure takes time – and the family must immediately leave the GIZ accommodation and support themselves for the duration of the proceedings.
Case 2: A similar case involves a musician well-known in Afghanistan who has also been prominent in advocating for women’s rights and democracy: Here too, an urgent application before the Administrative Court Berlin was successful, and an appeal by the Foreign Office was definitively rejected by the Higher Administrative Court. The deadline for issuing the visas was missed by the Foreign Office. Following a request for a coercive fine, the family received a notice from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees withdrawing their admission commitment – on the grounds that an interview conducted six months earlier indicated that the family was not at risk. The result: the family was simultaneously informed that they had seven days to leave the accommodation.
The acute problem: the applicant is in the 38th week of pregnancy – and in a few days will be without accommodation, without access to medical care, and under immediate risk of deportation.
These are not isolated cases. The sudden accumulation of such previously unseen events suggests a strategy by the federal government to prevent admissions at all costs, despite court rulings.
Legal expert Matthias Lehnert on this:
“In a state governed by the rule of law, one would expect a government to adhere to the directives and conclusions of the judiciary. At present, the opposite is happening.”
Still No Support for the 210 Deported People in Afghanistan
For over two weeks, 210 asylum seekers have been stranded in Afghanistan. During this time, the federal government could easily have organized visas for re-entry into Pakistan.
Eva Beyer from KLB on this:
“Even we as an NGO without diplomatic contacts could achieve this in less than two weeks. The problem therefore does not lie in external obstacles, but solely in the lack of political will.
Instead of taking responsibility, the federal government abandons people who traveled to Pakistan at its request and waited there for months or years for a visa. Now they are precisely at the mercy of the regime they sought protection from and which Germany had promised to protect them against. The federal government bears full responsibility for their fate.”
Regardless of whether the government’s strategy is also to revoke admission commitments in these cases: since their deportation to Afghanistan, they have been under Taliban surveillance.
The affected individuals have therefore written an urgent letter to the federal government (see attachment).
Contact
• Eva Beyer, Kabul Luftbrücke, eva@kabulluftbruecke.de
• Matthias Lehnert, lawyer, lehnert@aufenthaltsrecht.net
