In the early hours of July 22, the Qassim family, including four young children, were violently awakened. Police officers immediately took them to the Leipzig/Halle Airport, where they were forced to board a plane to Baghdad for deportation to Iraq.
That same morning, the Potsdam Administrative Court granted an emergency application to stop their deportation, ruling that their obligation to leave the country was invalid. The family should therefore be allowed to stay in Germany. The court ruling, however, came while they were already on a plane to Baghdad.
The deportation of the Yazidi family, who fled Iraq in 2014 from the terrorist militia ISIS, is an example of the brutal tightening of asylum and deportation policies under Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU). The German government, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), headed by former BlackRock employee Friedrich Merz (CDU), has declared war on the working class, with refugees first in line.
The Qassim family had lived in Lychen, in the state of Brandenburg, for three years. They had integrated themselves into society; the children attended school, with the youngest in daycare. The administrative court’s ruling, scheduled for the end of July, had been expected since April. However, the Saxon Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) deliberately created a fait accompli before the ruling arrived. The family was deported to Baghdad on Tuesday as part of a group of 43 people.
Deportations have increased rapidly under the Merz government. In the first half of 2025, there were 11,800 deportations, 2,300 more than in the same period last year (9,500). Last year, under Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), deportations had already reached a record number of 20,000.
Regarding Tuesday’s deportation flight, Thuringia’s Justice Minister Beate Meissner (CDU) stated that it was “completed without incident.” As if speaking on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), she added, “Our message is clear: Anyone who does not have a right of residence must leave our country.”
The family’s lawyer is now trying to secure their repatriation. However, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has classified the Yazidi family, whose house in the Sinjar Mountains was destroyed by ISIS and whose relatives and friends were murdered, not as members of a persecuted minority, but as “economic refugees.” The entire process exemplifies the bottomless mendacity and hypocrisy of the German ruling class.
Just 10 years ago, in the summer of 2015, when the idea of stationing the Bundeswehr in northern Iraq was being discussed, the case of the Yazidis was exploited relentlessly for propaganda purposes. It was argued that it was absolutely necessary to bring the Bundeswehr to Iraq so it could defend not only the Kurdish Peshmerga but also the Yazidis against the advance of ISIS.
“If genocide can only be prevented with German weapons, then we must help,” declared then-Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen (now head of the European Commission). Referring to the “attempted genocide against the Yazidis,” she trumpeted at the Munich Security Conference in February 2015: “Indifference is and remains not an option!”
However, Yazidis like the Qassims in Germany are now classified as “economic refugees.” The Potsdam Administrative Court found that serious doubts exist about the legality of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees’ rejection of the asylum application. The situation in Iraq, and especially in Sinjar, remains far from safe for Yazidis.
Twelve-year-old Maatz Qassim, who was able to make a phone call from Baghdad on Tuesday, told an rbb journalist, “We are afraid.” He reported on the nighttime police abduction: “They shouted ‘police’ and shone their flashlights in our faces.”
Maatz’s classmates have since initiated a petition against the deportation and have already collected over 400 signatures in three days. Lychen Mayor Karola Gundlach (Independent) also said she was dismayed and “could hardly believe that the family was deported.” The Brandenburg Refugee Council described the deportation as “scandalous.”
This deportation is not an isolated incident. In Hesse, the Afghan Kapoor family was deported to India (!) in April, even though they too were well integrated and their two sons had been attending school in Frankfurt for years. Another example concerns a daycare teacher from Offenbach who was deported to Afghanistan, despite support from her colleagues.
Since the fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, a particularly large number of Syrians have been deported, even though the situation in their homeland has by no means stabilized. Most of the Syrians who came to Germany are well integrated and indispensable as workers. The German government is increasingly adopting the policies of the AfD.
The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) rejects all deportations and categorically opposes the attacks on refugees and migrants. These deportations are an attack on the entire working class. Workers with German passports must, as a matter of principle, defend their international colleagues! Refugees are only the first victims. The deportations are the flip side of the Merz government’s war policy, the costs of which are ultimately intended to be borne by the entire working class.