Germany Turns to U.S. Playbook: Deportations Target Gaza War Protesters

The Intercept

31-03-2025

Berlin's immigration authorities are moving to deport four young foreign residents on allegations related to participation in protests against Israel's war on Gaza, an unprecedented move that raises serious concerns over civil liberties in Germany.
The deportation orders, issued under German migration law, were made amid political pressure and over internal objections from the head of the state of Berlin's immigration agency. The internal strife arose because three of those targeted for deportation are citizens of European Union member states who normally enjoy freedom of movement between E.U. countries.
The orders — issued by the state of Berlin, whose Senate administration oversees immigration enforcement — are set to take effect in less than a month. None of the four has been convicted of any crimes.
The cases are drawing comparisons to the U.S.'s use of deportation orders to suppress social movements. 'If someone is being expelled simply for their political beliefs, that's a massive overreach.'
'What we're seeing here is straight out of the far right's playbook,' said Alexander Gorski, a lawyer representing two of the protesters. 'You can see it in the U.S. and Germany, too: Political dissent is silenced by targeting the migration status of protesters.'
'From a legal perspective, we were alarmed by the reasoning, which reminded us of the case of Mahmoud Khalil,' Gorski said, referring to the Palestinian Columbia University graduate and U.S. permanent resident who was seized from his apartment building on allegations related to campus pro-Palestine activities.
The four people slated for deportation, Cooper Longbottom, Kasia Wlaszczyk, Shane O'Brien, and Roberta Murray, are citizens of, respectively, the U.S., Poland, and in the latter two cases Ireland.
Under German migration law, authorities don't need a criminal conviction to issue a deportation order, said Thomas Oberhäuser, a lawyer and chair of the executive committee on migration law at the German Bar Association. The reasons cited, however, must be proportional to severity of deportation, meaning that factors like whether someone will be separated from their family or lose their business come into play.
'The key question is: How severe is the threat and how proportionate the response?' said Oberhäuser, who is not involved in the case. 'If someone is being expelled simply for their political beliefs, that's a massive overreach.'
Each of the four protesters faces separate allegations from the authorities, all of which are sourced from police files and tied to pro-Palestine actions in Berlin. Some, but not all, of the allegations would correspond to criminal charges in Germany; almost none of them have been brought before a criminal court.
The protests in question include a mass sit-in at the Berlin central train station, a road blockade, and the late-2024 occupation of a building at the Free University Berlin.
Read our complete coverage
The only event that tied the four cases together was the allegation that the protesters participated in the university occupation, which involved property damage, and alleged obstruction of an arrest — a so-called de-arrest aimed at blocking a fellow protesters' detention. None of the protesters are accused of any particular acts of vandalism or the de-arrest at the university. Instead, the deportation order cites the suspicion that they took part in a coordinated group action. (The Free University told The Intercept it had no knowledge of the deportation orders.)
Some of the allegations are minor. Two, for example, are accused of calling a police officer 'fascist' — insulting an officer, which is a crime. Three are accused of demonstrating with groups chanting slogans like 'From the river to the sea, Palestine Will be Free' — which was outlawed last year in Germany — and 'free Palestine.' Authorities also claim all four shouted antisemitic or anti-Israel slogans, though none are specified.
Two are accused of grabbing an officers' or another protesters' arm in an attempt to stop arrests at the train station sit-in.
O'Brien, one of the Irish citizens, is the only one of the four whose deportation order included a charge – the accusation that he called a police officer a 'fascist' – that has been brought before a criminal court in Berlin, where he was acquitted.
All four are accused, without evidence, of supporting Hamas, a group Germany has designated as a terrorist organization. 'What we're seeing are the harshest possible measures available, based on accusations that are extremely vague.'
Three of the four deportation orders explicitly invoke alleged public safety threats and support for Hamas to argue that the protesters are not entitled to their constitutional rights to free expression and assembly in deportation proceedings.
'What we're seeing are the harshest possible measures available, based on accusations that are extremely vague and in part completely unfounded,' said Gorski, the lawyer for two of the protesters.
In an unprecedented move, said Gorski, three of the four deportation orders cite Germany's national pledge to defend Israel – the country's Staatsräson, German for reason of state – as justification.
Oberhäuser, of the Bar Association's immigration committee, said Staatsräson is a principle rather than a meaningful legal category. And a parliamentary body recently argued that there are no legally binding effects of the provision.
The distinction, said Oberhäuser, makes the use of Staatsräson in deportation proceedings legally dubious: 'That's impermissible under constitutional law.'
Internal emails obtained by The Intercept show political pressure behind the scenes to issue the deportation orders, despite objections from Berlin immigration officials.
The battle played out between bureaucrats from the branches of the Senate of Berlin, the state's executive governing body under the authority of Kai Wegner, the mayor, who is in turn elected by the city's parliamentary body.
After the Berlin Senate's Interior Department asked for a signed deportation order, Silke Buhlmann, head of crime prevention and repatriation at the immigration agency, raised objections. 'There are no final criminal convictions to substantiate a sufficiently serious and actual threat.'
In an email, Buhlmann noted her concerns were shared by the immigration agency's top official Engelhard Mazanke.
Buhlmann explicitly warned that the legal basis for revoking the three EU citizens' freedom of movement was insufficient — and that deporting them would be unlawful.
'In coordination with Mr. Mazanke, I inform you that I cannot comply with your directive of December 20, 2024 — to conduct hearings for the individuals listed under a) to c) and subsequently determine loss of freedom of movement — for legal reasons,' Buhlmann wrote, referring to the three citizens of EU states as cases A to C. Buhlmann wrote that, though the police reports 'suggest a potential threat to public order from the individuals concerned, there are no final criminal convictions to substantiate a sufficiently serious and actual threat.'
The internal objection, known as a remonstration, was quickly overruled by Berlin Senate Department official Christian Oestmann, who dismissed the concerns and ordered to proceed with the expulsion orders anyway.
'[F]or these individuals, continued freedom of movement cannot be justified on grounds of public order and safety, regardless of any criminal convictions,' he wrote. 'I therefore request that the hearings be conducted immediately as instructed.'
In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for the Senate Department told The Intercept that the Interior department had authority over the immigration office.
'The Senate Department for the Interior and Sport exercises technical and administrative supervision over the State Office for Immigration,' the spokesperson said. 'As part of this role, it holds the authority to issue directives.'
The Senate declined to comment on the specifics of the cases, citing privacy protections. The immigration agency did not respond to The Intercept's request for comment.
In the end, Mazanke, the top immigration justice official, complied with the directive and signed the order.
In Interviews with The Intercept, the four protesters on the receiving end of the deportation orders declined to discuss the specific allegations levelled against them.
All four have, for the meantime, been ordered to leave Germany by April 21, 2025, or face forcible deportation.
The most severe consequences would be faced by Longbottom, a 27-year-old American student from Seattle, Washington, who would be barred by the order from entering any of the 29 Schengen Zone countries for two years after leaving Germany.
Longbottom, who denied any antisemitism, told The Intercept they have only six months left to complete their master's degree at Berlin's Alice Salomon University studying human rights work.
'Will I be able to finish my Master's program here? Where am I going to live?' Longbottom said. 'All of these questions are very unclear.'
Longbottom, who is trans, lives in Berlin with their partner, an Italian citizen. The prospect of being separated weighs heavily on them.
'I don't have anything to start over with,' they said. 'As a trans person, the idea of going back to the U.S. right now feels really scary.'
Kasia Wlaszczyk, 35, a cultural worker and Polish citizen, said he never imagined this could happen. He emphasized that allegations of antisemitism are predominantly a racist tactic levelled against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims in Germany and the deportation orders reflected an increase in the use of the allegation against anyone standing in solidarity with them.
'Germany weaponizes these accusations,' he said.
Wlaszczyk, who is also trans, hasn't lived in Poland since the age of ten.
'If this goes through, it would uproot me from the community I've built here.' he said.
The sense of an impending loss of community was common among the protesters. 'They're being used as guinea pigs.'
'My illusion of Berlin has been shattered by the lack of response to the genocide,' said Shane O'Brien, 29, an Irish citizen. The violent repression of Arab communities in Berlin, he said, left him shaken.
After three years in Berlin, the threat of removal now feels like a rupture to Roberta Murray, 31, who is also Irish.
'My life is here,' they said. 'I'm not making any plans for Ireland. I believe that we will win — and that we'll stay. I don't believe this will hold up in a court.'
Gorski and other attorneys now filed an urgent motion for interim relief alongside a formal appeal challenging the legality of the deportation orders.
He noted that he has worked on similar cases where migration law was used to target pro-Palestinian activists for their speech, but what sets the current four cases apart, he said, is the openness with which Germany's so-called Staatsräson is used to justify expulsions.
'These people's criminal records are clean,' Gorski said. Yet the Berlin government appears to be constructing a narrative of 'imminent danger' to sidestep due process.
Gorski warned that the cases are a test run for broader repression against immigrants and activists in Germany, not just about four protesters.
He said, 'They're being used as guinea pigs.'