German airport plans migrant ‘deportation terminal’

Munich International Airport is planning to build a terminal to repatriate up to 100 migrants a day as Bavaria struggles to clear a backlog of 24,000 foreigners told to leave Germany.

Bavaria’s long-serving Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, seen in 2016, says ‘we can make deportations quicker and more efficient’. Picture: AFP

Munich International Airport is planning to build a “deportation terminal” to repatriate up to a hundred migrants a day as Bavaria struggles to clear a backlog of 24,000 foreigners under orders to leave Germany.

Successive chancellors have announced “offensives” to ­return rejected asylum-seekers and immigrants with criminal convictions.

Their efforts have been frustrated by difficulties ranging from missing documents to some countries’ unwillingness to take back their citizens.

A council submission proposes a two-storey terminal at Germany’s second-busiest airport by the end of 2027.

It would be overseen by the federal police force, which is responsible for border control, and staffed by up to 300 officers from the Bavarian state police, 145 ­security guards and 90 officials from other public agencies.

The terminal would serve as a deportation centre for rejected immigrants and handle asylum applications from migrants who arrive by air.

Since 2022 the airport has had a separate “combined transit and deportation detention ­facility”, surrounded by barbed wire and equipped with recreation rooms and a gym. It has enough cells to hold 22 deportees and can also accommodate up to 29 “transit” migrants who seek asylum after landing at the airport. Last year it processed just over 300 people, who stayed an average of 16 days.

Joachim Herrmann, the ­Bavarian Interior Minister, said the new building was important. “It is necessary so that we can make deportations quicker and more efficient,” he told Bild.

The plan may run into local problems. Airport officials want the terminal to be built on a plot that would encroach on the ­Erdinger Moos nature ­reserve, a patch of moorland that is a breeding ground for birds such as curlews, lapwings and skylarks.

It would also fall under the jurisdiction of Freising town council, which is believed to be sceptical about any airport ­expansion.

Munich city council, which owns a 23 per cent stake in the airport, is divided about the plan. Dieter Reiter, the city’s Social Democratic Party mayor, has declared his support for the project but the Green Party group and two smaller left-wing parties have called on him to oppose it.

THE TIMES