Protests at airports: calls for an immediate stop to deportations

dpa/rtr | During a nationwide day of action, hundreds of people demonstrated against deportations and detention at several airports.

A good 700 people protested near Munich Airport in Oberding on Saturday. In Leipzig, the police estimated the number of participants at around 400, in Frankfurt at around 300 and in Berlin-Brandenburg at around 150 people. The police spoke of around 50 demonstrators at each of the Cologne/Bonn and Düsseldorf airports.

The action alliance assumed higher numbers and spoke of “several thousand people” who took part in the various initiatives. Parallel to the protests at the airports in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Cologne, Leipzig and Munich, there were demonstrations in other cities - including Bielefeld and Hanover.

According to a preliminary report, the EU clearly wants to deport asylum seekers from Europe. "We are consistently continuing the European migration transition. We will present a legislative proposal on Tuesday (October 27, 2026) to make Frontex broader and stronger. In particular, Frontex must be made the central EU deportation agency. Anyone who has no right to stay in the EU must actually leave it," the responsible EU enlargement commissioner, Magnus Brunner, told Welt am Sonntag in advance. According to the wishes of the EU Commission, a “deportation coordination center” is to be created in Europe in the future, in which Frontex will play a central role.

The nationwide protest in Germany is directed against the deportations of rejected asylum seekers, detention pending deportation and the expansion of infrastructure for this purpose.

In Leipzig it was mainly about charter deportations to Afghanistan. Deportation flights to Afghanistan have already taken off from Leipzig/Halle Airport several times this year. According to authorities, there were mostly criminals on board.

“We are calling for an immediate stop to deportations because those seeking protection have a right to asylum,” said a spokeswoman for the action alliance. It is terrible that the German government of all people is trampling on this right and collaborating with the Taliban on deportations.

In Frankfurt, according to the “We’ll come united” network, which called for the protests together with regional actors, the protests are also directed against a planned “deportation terminal”.

The money that is spent on deportations should instead be invested in measures to integrate refugees, said a spokeswoman: “We oppose any infrastructure behind deportations and demand freedom of movement for all people.”

A separate “deportation terminal” is also to be built at Munich Airport in order to speed up and facilitate the deportation process. There the campaign “Prevent deportation terminal MUC!” called for protests. She criticizes the fact that with the expansion the airport is providing infrastructure for more deportations and is profiting economically from it.

According to EU Commissioner Magnus Brunner, the number of returns in the EU has increased significantly this year. The newspaper writes that the return rate of illegal migrants in the first ten months of the current year is over 30 percent. “That’s not enough,” the former Austrian finance minister continued. In the comparable period last year, according to the preliminary report, only one in five (20 percent) rejected asylum seekers from the EU was deported to their home country or another third country.

As Welt am Sonntag further reports, citing informed circles in the EU Commission, Frontex has now run out of money for the so-called EU reintegration program, despite a budget of more than one billion euros in 2026. The money is used to offer people who return voluntarily financial support for reintegration in their home country. The reason for this is that demand for the program has recently increased sharply. According to internal figures from the EU Commission, over 21,200 people had already been registered by October - an increase of around 59 percent compared to the same period last year, the newspaper writes in advance.