An increasing number of refugees in Germany are turning to churches for protection, largely against threatened deportation, the told the news organization Funke Media Group in comments released on Sunday.
“The in many places as a result of increased pressure to deport, with requests sometimes more than quadrupling,” an EKD spokeswoman told the German dpa news agency, basing her figure on reports from regional churches.
She said the reports however indicated that many of the requests could not be granted owing to the high demand, leaving many refugees unprotected against actions by authorities.
The incoming government under to-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) has announced its intention to deport more asylum seekers than in the past after the number of deportations under the outgoing government following a comparatively low point in 2020.
Why do asylum seekers turn to the church?
Dietlind Jochims, the chairwoman of the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum, noted “growing fear and insecurity among people with unsecured residency.”
Consequently, the growing fear of deportation is leading to a “sharp increase in the number of requests for church protection,” Jochims told newspapers from the Funke Media Group.
According to the German Federal Office for Migration and (BAMF), 617 asylum seekers found protection in the church in the first quarter of 2025, compared to 604 in the same period last year.
under a special privilege that has no solid basis in law but is given rather in accordance with the country’s Christian and humanitarian traditions.
Refugees who receive shelter in churches can be temporarily protected from deportation to allow their asylum cases to be reevaluated and other judicial options to be sought.
Most of the cases are so-called , where the person seeking protection has already applied for asylum in another EU country and is to be deported there.
Growing criticism of church asylum
However, since political calls for stricter deportations have become louder, the situation for church asylum has worsened.
The German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum is seeing refugees who have taken shelter in churches increasingly threatened by police evictions, with several cases occurring in the past few years.
The EKD has, however, defended the practice.
A brochure released by the EKD on the topic on Wednesday quoted Protestant refugee commissioner Christian Stäblein as saying that asylum was granted in the church only after careful consideration and as a last resort to give those seeking protection a chance to have their plight recognized.
Edited by: Timothy Jones and Kieran Burke
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