Germany deports women and children to Iraq along with convicted criminals
The recent deportation flight from Germany to Iraq included not only convicted criminals but also women and children—more than initially announced. According to ARD reports, four women and eight minors were deported among 43 people, including a Yazidi family consisting of four children from Brandenburg, two women and minors from Saxony, and another family with minors from North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Yazidi family had filed an urgent appeal against their deportation, but the decision to halt their deportation came too late. Later, the administrative court in Potsdam ruled that the family was not entitled to protection, confirming that there was no individual or collective threat from the Islamic State (ISIS). Brandenburg's Interior Minister, René Wilke, expressed his desire to return the family, but the federal interior ministry preferred to wait for the court's ruling. The family can still file an appeal.
Contradictions have also emerged in the numbers of deportees. Initially, the states reported the deportation of 46 individuals, then Lower Saxony corrected its number to only four instead of eight, bringing the total to 42. However, Thuringia and the federal police confirmed the deportation of 43 individuals, leaving one person unaccounted for.
The deportation of 14 convicted criminals has been confirmed. However, the Federal Ministry of the Interior only confirmed that all deportees "were involved in criminal proceedings," without clarifying whether they were actually convicted. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had previously described the deportees to Afghanistan as "dangerous criminals," but his statements suggest that not all of them are convicted.
The deportations to Iraq have increased significantly—from 300 people in 2023 to 699 in 2024, and 157 during the first quarter of 2025. There is no official deportation agreement between Germany and Iraq, but deportations are carried out according to international law. The deportation of Yazidis raises widespread controversy, as they were subjected to genocide by ISIS in 2014. Despite the general impression, deportation is not limited to criminals only, as this recent journey has shown.