German City Becomes Reluctant Symbol of a Nation’s Migration Battles

Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.

The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.

But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.

The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.

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The attack has dominated headlines for days. “Why was the alleged Solingen assassin still in Germany?” asked the mainstream Süddeusche Zeitung newspaper — the same question raised by many other news organizations. Bild, Germany’s most widely read tabloid, ran an article suggesting that some German laws made the country a “‘paradise’ for terrorists.” And Der Stern, a glossy weekly, ran a column titled: “Not everyone who addresses the problems of immigration is a Nazi.”

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who faces voters next year and whose party and coalition have been bleeding support, visited the site of the attack on Monday morning and focused in good part on the issue of deportations.

“We will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not remain here in Germany are sent back,” he told reporters {snip}

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The details of the suspect’s relatively short stay in Germany fit neatly with the far-right’s claims that Germany has lost control over the many refugees it hosts.

The suspect came to Germany late in 2022 and was scheduled to be deported in 2023 to Bulgaria, where he first entered the European Union and, under the bloc’s rules, where he was supposed to file his asylum claim.

But when officers showed up at the refugee center where he was living, he was nowhere to be found and his deportation was quietly dropped, according to the newsmagazine Der Spiegel {snip}

Because the six-month limit for deportation to Bulgaria had lapsed without further attempts to deport him, the suspect was ultimately given a special protected status accorded to people who cannot be returned to their home countries because of the risk of physical harm, according to Der Spiegel and Mr. Reul. He was then officially able to register to live in refugee housing in downtown Solingen, where he moved in September of 2023, according to the report.

Last year, more than 70,000 refugees were given such protected status, according to official figures. A recent court decision challenged the notion that all people coming from Syria would face undue danger if sent home.

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