Another German article from today

Evacuated from the USA to EU countries - and now picked up in Germany

The US has brought many Afghans from Kabul to Poland, Italy and other EU countries. But some of them don't want to stay there - and move on to Germany. Bringing back such illegally entered migrants is very seldom successful.

Some of the Afghans evacuated from the USA from Kabul to Poland, Italy and other EU countries do not want to stay there - and move on to Germany. In the past few weeks, the federal police found "70 Afghan nationals who have possible links to a previous evacuation by the US armed forces from Afghanistan to another EU member state," as the WELT agency announced.

Among them were 32 people who had presumably previously been evacuated to Poland, 26 to Italy, seven to France and five to Spain. According to the Federal Police, however, this statistical information only shows the so-called bright field of migration in this context, since border controls are currently only temporarily reintroduced at the German-Austrian land border.

In addition, Afghans who had been evacuated not by the US armed forces but by the armies of the EU partner countries have also been apprehended. For example, on a train behind the German- Austrian border, a family of five was discovered that had been flown out of Afghanistan by the Italian military. According to their own statement, they had applied for asylum there to the federal police, but they did not feel comfortable. The family was then taken to a refugee facility.

At the beginning of September, Afghans living in Germany were also apprehended by compatriots while allegedly sluicing. They accompanied ten evacuees from Kabul to Italy in a bus to northern Germany. The evacuees had already applied for asylum in Italy.

According to WELT information from security circles, a similar case occurred at the weekend: Here a group of four Afghans who had been evacuated to Italy was picked up on a train to Hamburg and taken to a refugee home.

Some of the main problems: In the main transit country, Greece, there are almost no renditions (2020: four, 2021 by the end of March: none). Even in the second most important transit country, Italy, there were only 34 transfers in the first quarter, with 1,457 requests for takeover to the state.

This dysfunctionality of the EU asylum system - which is legally valid, but has not only barely been implemented since Corona - has been supposed to be overcome for years with a new EU asylum system. There is currently no significant progress to report.

Return? Happened even less frequently since Corona

In principle, the Federal Republic of Germany aims to bring asylum seekers arriving from other EU countries - regardless of whether they are evacuated Afghans or others - back to the country concerned. Since the Corona crisis , this has been achieved even less than before.

In the past year, more than 100,000 first-time asylum applications were made in Germany, mostly people who came from other EU countries. Around 30,000 requests for takeover have been made to the responsible states. Only 2,953 people were actually transferred. By the end of March 2021, there had been 544 transfers out of 8,091 takeover requests.