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Germany [EN]  GDP, “Germany Detention Profile” 

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Article posted the 2014/10/30

[EN] The study of Global Detention Project presents several aspects of the German practices concerning migrant and asylum seekers’ detention. For example, unlike the vast majority of EU countries, Germany makes wide use of its prisons to hold non-citizens in administrative detention. Moreover, the decentralized nature of immigration detention in Germany (managed by the Länders, regional governments) presents important challenges in getting comprehensive data about detention practices.

Germany Detention Profile

Introduction

In 2012, Germany became the second largest recipient of international migrants in the world, second only to the United States (OECD 2013). Germany is also one of the main recipients of asylum seekers. In 2013, nearly 127,000 persons sought international protection in Germany, accounting for approximately 30 percent of all requests filed in the European Union (EU) that year (UNHCR 2014).

On the other hand, the numbers of immigration detainees have steadily dropped. In 2013, Germany placed 4,812 people in immigration detention, roughly half the number detained in 2008 (Bundesregierung 2012; Pro Asyl and Diakonie Hessen 2013).

There are a number of reasons for this apparent divergence between immigration pressures and responses. Since the expansion of the EU’s eastern border in 2004, there have been fewer undocumented migrants entering Germany. Also, following the adoption of new detention legislation in 2009, domestic courts have reportedly rigorously scrutinized this practice (Pro Asyl and Diakonie Hessen 2013).

In an interview with the Global Detention Project in April 2014, the head of theGerman National Agency for the Prevention of Torture said, “There are important discussions going on right now in Germany about whether we should be detaining immigrants at all. The SPD [Social Democrats] are arguing that we should do away with this. The CDU [Christian Democrats] is not so clear on the issue yet” (Dopp 2014).

Germany’s detention policies contrast sharply with those of other EU Member States. First, unlike the vast majority of EU countries, Germany makes wide use of its prisons to hold non-citizens in administrative detention. Secondly, regional (Länder) governments, rather than the national government, are responsible for immigration detention. Of the country’s 16 Länder, ten use prisons for confining migrants.

The decentralized nature of immigration detention in Germany also presents important challenges in getting comprehensive information about detention practices and establishing accountability, particularly at the international level. Federal authorities typically claim that they do not have statistics on immigration detention because they are not in charge of this practice and regional authorities are sometimes not responsive to requests for information (see the section “Access to Information” below). Additionally, regional governments at times disagree with federal authorities on best practices, including over issues like whether prisons are adequate places to hold people for immigration-related reasons (see the section “Detention Infrastructure”).

Germany’s decentralised detention regime has been at the heart of two recent ground-breaking legal cases at the Court of Justice of the European Union(CJEU). In July 2014, the CJEU found that Germany’s practice of using prisons for immigration reasons to be incompatible with the EU Returns Directive. In its judgment in Bero & Bouzalmate it ruled that Germany cannot rely on the fact that there are no dedicated detention facilities in a given Land to justify keeping non-citizens in prison pending their removal. In Pham, the Court found that the same rule applies even if the detainee has consented to being confined in a penitentiary (CJEU 2014a; CJEU 2014b).

See this article online:

http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/europe/germany/introduction.html