When it comes to migration policy, the SPD district administrator explodes

WELT When it comes to migration policy, the SPD district administrator explodes Ulrich Kraetzer • 3 days • 3 minutes reading time A convicted IS supporter from Syria lives in a refugee home in Brandenburg. But he cannot be deported - much to the annoyance of the responsible district administrator. His criticism of German migration policy shows on a small scale why it fails on a large scale every day. District Administrator Gernot Schmidt (SPD) in his office in Seelow David Heerde Gernot Schmidt is a social democrat of the old school, not one who wears hipster clothes or discusses gender issues on social media. Someone with a tie and a grey jacket who, as he describes himself, throws himself "into the thousand tasks of daily work". Schmidt's place of work is in the far east of the republic. Here in Brandenburg, the trained land reclamation worker acts as district administrator in the Märkisch-Oderland district, and has done so for almost two decades. The 62-year-old has three years left before he can retire. Why should he get upset? But sometimes Schmidt does let loose. For example, when it comes to migration policy. And when he has the impression that the state is being led by the nose. He is not an agitator, says Schmidt, definitely not. "But in some cases you have to ask yourself whether things aren't going in a fundamentally wrong direction." The case Schmidt is talking about concerns a 28-year-old Syrian who came to Germany in 2015 - and has to accept being called an IS terrorist. The Berlin Higher Regional Court sentenced him to a youth sentence of several years in May 2017. He has since been released from prison. He no longer lives behind bars, but in a refugee shelter in a small town in Schmidt's Märkisch-Oderland district. Shaas al-M., the name of the Syrian, had joined an Islamist terrorist group in his country of birth at the age of 16, which later became part of the so-called Islamic State (IS). His parents sent him to Germany via the Balkan route in August 2015. Shaas al-M. applied for asylum. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees recognized him as a refugee three months after his arrival. But Shaas al-M. apparently did not feel comfortable in the refugee home in Bad Belzig where he was initially housed. He dropped out of his German course. Instead, he wanted to return to Syria: to IS. The plan to travel to the combat zones failed. But M. helped the terrorist militia in another way. He spied on Berlin's Alexanderplatz and gave IS information about the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate - in preparation for a terrorist attack. The police put an end to the activity. Shaas al-M. was arrested in March 2016. A good year later, the Berlin Higher Regional Court sentenced him to a youth sentence of five years in prison. On March 19, 2021, Shaas al-M. was released again. Attempts to get him out of the country failed. On the one hand, the Syrian appealed against the various decisions to revoke his refugee status and to deport him. Above all, however, the Federal Republic had already issued a general deportation ban in 2012 due to the crimes of the Assad regime. After the fall of the Assad regime in December, the federal government announced that it wanted to reassess the security situation in Syria. But the announced situation report has not yet been completed. Shaas al-M. is therefore allowed to stay in Germany until further notice. His lawyer has just applied to relax the spatial restrictions imposed on him so that he can travel to Berlin. District Administrator Schmidt struggles for words when he talks about the case. He cannot decide whether the situation in Syria makes deportation legally impossible, says the district administrator. He also does not know whether the young man has renounced his radical ideas. But he can say one thing: "I think that such people should be deported." He recently asked his administration how many residents of the refugee shelters in his district are classified as Islamist threats. "There are 22," says Schmidt.