Germany to Deport Four Foreign Residents over Pro-Palestine Activism

Berlin (Quds News Network)- Berlin’s immigration authorities are reportedly seeking to deport four young foreign residents for participating in pro-Palestine protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. This has raised significant concerns about civil liberties in Germany and drawn comparisons to the U.S. use of deportation orders to suppress pro-Palestine activism.

+972 Magazine and The Intercept reported the news on Tuesday. 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 were issued by the state of Berlin, whose Senate administration oversees immigration enforcement. The orders are set to take effect in less than a month. None of the four has been convicted of any crimes.

The four slated for deportation are Cooper Longbottom, Kasia Wlaszczyk, Shane O’Brien, and Roberta Murray. They are citizens of, respectively, the US, Poland, and in the latter two cases Ireland.

Under German migration law, authorities don’t need a criminal conviction to issue a deportation order, explained 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.”

“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 continued, referring to the Palestinian Columbia University graduate and US permanent resident who was detained from his apartment building by ICE agents over his campus pro-Palestine activities.

Accusations

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.

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 Palestinian group Germany has designated as a terrorist organization.

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 the 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 reveal political pressure to issue deportation orders, despite objections from Berlin immigration officials. The dispute unfolded between bureaucrats within the Senate of Berlin, the executive governing body led by Mayor Kai Wegner, who is elected by the city’s parliamentary body.

When the Berlin Senate’s Interior Department requested a signed deportation order, Silke Buhlmann, head of crime prevention and repatriation at the immigration office, raised concerns. In an email, Buhlmann noted that these concerns were shared by Engelhard Mazanke, the immigration agency’s top official. She explicitly warned that the legal grounds for revoking the three EU citizens’ freedom of movement were insufficient, and deporting them would be unlawful.

“In coordination with Mr. Mazanke, I inform you that I cannot comply with your directive of Dec. 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 EU citizens as cases A to C. Though police reports “suggest a potential threat to public order,” Buhlmann argued there were no final criminal convictions to substantiate a sufficiently serious threat.

This objection was swiftly overruled by Christian Oestmann, an official from the Berlin Senate Department, who dismissed the concerns and ordered the expulsion orders to proceed. “[F]or these individuals, continued freedom of movement cannot be justified on grounds of public order and safety, regardless of any criminal convictions,” Oestmann wrote. “I therefore request that the hearings be conducted immediately as instructed.”

In response to The Intercept, a spokesperson for the Senate Department emphasized 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 stated. “As part of this role, it holds the authority to issue directives.” The Senate declined to comment on the specifics of the cases due to privacy protections.

Ultimately, Mazanke complied with the directive and signed the deportation orders.

In interviews with The Intercept, the four protesters revealed they had been ordered to leave Germany by April 21, 2025, or face forced deportation.

The most severe consequences will be faced by Longbottom, a 27-year-old American student from Seattle, Washington, who will be banned from entering any of the 29 Schengen Zone countries for two years after leaving Germany. Longbottom, who denied accusations of antisemitism, expressed uncertainty about completing their master’s degree in human rights at Berlin’s Alice Salomon University. “Will I be able to finish my Master’s program here? Where am I going to live?” they said. “All of these questions are very unclear.”

Kasia Wlaszczyk, a 35-year-old cultural worker and Polish citizen, was shocked by the situation. He noted that allegations of antisemitism are often used as a racist tactic against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims in Germany, and that the deportation orders represent a growing trend of using these accusations against those who show solidarity with them. “Germany weaponizes these accusations,” he said.

Wlaszczyk, who hasn’t lived in Poland since childhood, said, “If this goes through, it would uproot me from the community I’ve built here.”

A shared sense of losing community resonated among the protesters. “My illusion of Berlin has been shattered by the lack of response to the genocide,” said Shane O’Brien, 29, an Irish citizen. The harsh treatment of Arab communities in Berlin, he added, has deeply shaken him.

After three years in Berlin, the threat of deportation feels like a rupture to Roberta Murray, 31, 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.”