24-07-2025
Germany updates: Munich Airport plans deportation terminal – DW – 07/24/2025
Germany's second-largest largest airport is reportedly planning a "repatriation terminal" to process migrant deportations. Meanwhile, German Catholics have criticized the humanitarian situation in Gaza. DW has Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) said on Thursday that it was "appalled" by the suffering being endured by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and called on the German government to ensure the enforcement of international law.
"The humanitarian situation for the civilian population in Gaza is catastrophic," ZdK President Irme Stetter-Karp told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
While acknowledging that Israel "has a legitimate right to defend itself against the terrorist organization Hamas," she said that didn't absolve the Israeli government from its responsibility to respect international law.
Stetter-Karp also said Israel's military operations were impacting the civilian population to an "unjustifiable" extent and highlighted the acute threat of starvation, illness and death facing children in the besieged enclave.
"We are aghast that 875 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access aid at the distribution centers in Gaza," she said. "This approach by the Israeli government must end immediately!"
Stetter-Karp also highlighted the plight of Palestinian Christians in the occupied West Bank, who she said were increasingly the targets of Israeli settler violence.
Germany's second-largest airport is reportedly planning to construct a special deportation terminal in which police will process the repatriation of migrants to be deported.
According to a planning document seen by the Reuters news agency, the so-called "repatriation terminal" at Munich Airport is to be around 60 meters long and spread over two floors.
The facility, which is designed to facilitate "up to 100 arrivals and departures processing up to 50 individual measures and group charter flights daily," is planned for 2028 and will also include a "central check-in in order to coordinate repatriations efficiently," according to the document.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, both of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), have taken a strong stance on deportations of migrants with criminal convictions or rejected asylum claims.
Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter, of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), said the deportation of those convicted of crimes to their home countries was a sensible measure. "Therefore I don't think it's fundamentally wrong to propose such a terminal," he said.
But political support is not universal. Local Green Party politician Gülseren Demirel told the broadsheet: "We are more than critical of a specific terminal for deportations."
Welcome to DW's coverage of developments in Germany on Thursday, July 24.
Despite Germany's dramatic defeat in the Euro 2025 semifinal last night, we all have to carry on, so here's what's on the agenda today:
