Overview

• Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said talks with the Taliban are very advanced and could enable regular removals to Afghanistan, including on commercial flights.
• Ministry staff held technical meetings in Kabul last weekend on how to organize scheduled returns, and Dobrindt said he is prepared to travel if needed.
• Berlin has instructed the BAMF to resume processing Syrian asylum applications with priority for working‑age young men, and Dobrindt wants to deny protection to Syrians who travel back to visit.
• SPD‑led states and legal experts called plans for unbounded deportation detention unconstitutional, even as an EU return proposal contemplates longer custody with entfristung in severe cases.
• Operational and rights constraints persist, with roughly 790 detention places largely occupied, about 226,000 people listed as obliged to leave, only around 12,000 deportations in H1 2025, and UN and NGO reports warning of grave abuses in Afghanistan; Germany has conducted just two Afghanistan removal flights since 2021, both via Qatar.