BERLIN — Germany deported dozens of Afghan men to their homeland on Friday, the second time it has done so since the Taliban returned to power and the first since a new government pledging a tougher line on migration took office in Berlin. German authorities said a flight took off Friday morning carrying 81 Afghans, all of them men who had previously come to judicial authorities’ attention and had asylum applications rejected. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the deportation was carried out with the help of Qatar and was preceded by weeks of negotiations. He also said there were contacts with Afghanistan, but didn’t elaborate. More than 10 months ago, Germany’s previous government deported Afghan nationals to their homeland for the first time since the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to step up deportations of failed asylum-seekers. Merz noted that, while diplomatic relations between Germany and Afghanistan have not formally been broken off, Berlin does not recognize the Taliban government in Kabul. “The decisive question is how one deals with this regime, and it will remain at technical coordination until further notice,” he said at a news conference in Berlin. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, visiting Paris, said that “there is no expansion of relations and no recognition of the regime there.” The Interior Ministry said the government aims to carry out more deportations to Afghanistan, but didn’t specify when that might happen. Merz made tougher migration policy a central plank of his campaign for Germany’s election in February. Just after he took office in early May, the government stationed more police at the border -- stepping up border checks introduced by the Scholz government -- and said some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe’s biggest economy would be turned away. It has also suspended family reunions for many migrants. Asylum applications declined from 329,120 in 2023 to 229,751 last year and have continued to fall this year. “You can see from the figures that we are obviously on the right path, but we are not yet at the end of that path,” Merz said. The Afghan deportation flight took off hours before German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt discussed migration with counterparts from five neighboring countries -- France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic -- as well as the European Union’s commissioner responsible for migration, Magnus Brunner. Dobrindt hosted the meeting on the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak, on the Austrian border. Dobrindt said the countries agree that the European migration system “must be hardened and sharpened,” with faster asylum proceedings and “return hubs” outside the EU. “We wanted to send a signal that Germany is no longer sitting in the brakeman’s cab on migration issues in Europe, but is in the locomotive,” Dobrindt said. Geir Moulson, The Associated Press
