Opinion of terre des hommes on the Return Reference Act
Osnabrück/Berlin, 25.10.2023. Today, the government draft of a return improvement law was decided in the Federal Cabinet. The Federal Government thus agreed on a catalog of tightening, detention, deportation and criminalization of those seeking protection and people without a right of residence that could date from Horst Seehofer. The child rights organization terre des hommes completely rejects the bill. For children and adolescents, the tightening means growing up in a permanent climate of fear of deportation and attacks by the authorities.
According to the draft law, for example, far -reaching powers for immigration authorities and the police should be created in order to ignore the needs and rights of children and adolescents. »In the future, children and adolescents can be torn out of bed by the police without warning, either because they should be deported themselves or because the police are looking for another person to deport them. The police can even leave the room door, «says Sophia Eckert, migration expert at terre des hommes . »This can and will be strongly traumatized children and adolescents and violates the child's well -being in a blatant way. Such a procedure is not worthy of a rule of law «.
This draft law also provides for significant tightening in the case of deportation and exit custody. terre des hommes are currently known countless cases in which fathers, but also single mothers were separated from their children by deportation or detention, only to obtain the deportation of the families. »The Federal Government clearly asked the UN Children's Rights Committee last year to prevent family separations from refugees and migrated children from their parents. Instead of complying with this request, the Federal Government creates a law that will lead to an increase in family separations in violation of people and child rights, «says Sophia Eckert.
In such a restrictive climate, it is hardly surprising that the reliefs for refugees for refugees announced in the coalition agreement 2021 are once again ignored with the return improvement law. »It cannot be that the family reunification to those who are entitled to protection will be overlooked again in the present law. Your family reunification must be made easier immediately. The families can no longer wait. While everything seems politically possible in the area of repatriation and imprisonment, the right of refugees are based on living together with the family with feet, «explains Sophia Eckert.