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Rabat – Berlin’s immigration authorities have ordered four young foreign residents to leave Germany over accusation “antisemitism” and “support for terrorism” to due their participation in peaceful protests condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The deportation orders are set to take effect in less than one month despite the four individuals – three EU citizens and an American – not having been convicted of any crime. The activists, who must leave Germany by April 21, issued a joint statement accusing the German officials of weaponizing immigration law in order to silence pro-Palestinian voices.
The unprecedented move has sparked concerns over freedom of speech and civil liberties in Germany, with many comparing it to the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine activism in the US.
Alexander Gorski, a lawyer representing two out of the quartet, warned that Germany is witnessing a state of political descent into far-right policies.
“What we’re seeing here is straight out of the far right’s playbook […] You can see it in the U.S. and Germany, too: Political dissent is silenced by targeting the migration status of protesters,” said Gorski.
The lawyer noted that this isn’t the first where German authorities using migration law as a “tool of repression against social movements” stating that he has encountered more than a dozen cases of Palestinian and other Arab nationals whose refugee status or residency were revoked because of their participation in pro-Palestinian rallies or even over social media posts condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023.
Under German migration law, authorities can issue deportation orders without the presence of a criminal record if the cited reason is severe enough to warrant such a punishment.
“The key question is: How severe is the threat and how proportionate the response?” said Thomas Oberhäuser, a lawyer and chair of the executive committee on migration law at the German Bar Association. “If someone is being expelled simply for their political beliefs, that’s a massive overreach.”
German officials have repeatedly justified their crackdown on pro-Palestine voices as a measure to combat anti-semitism and protect the country’s Jewish population, thus atoning for its Holocaust. However, many argue that Germany has failed to break from its Nazi past, pointing to its treatment of anti-Zionist Jews who have spoken up in support of Palestine.
In October 2023, German authorities arrested Iris Hefets, a German-Israeli psychoanalyst in Berlin, on charges of anti-Semitism, for merely walking alone with a placard reading “As an Israeli and as a Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza.”
That same month, more than a hundred German-Jewish artists, writers, academics, journalists and cultural workers published an open letter condemning Germany’s repression of pro-Palestinian speech and widespread accusations of anti-Semitism directed at everyone who criticizes Israel’s actions.
