– Mayor of the City of Bayreuth Ms. Brigitte Merk-Erbe(oberbuergermeisterin[ÄT]stadt.ba yreuth[DOT]de)

– Senior Administrator Manuela Brozat (Department for Family, School and Social Affairs at the City of Bayreuth, Referat5[ÄT]stadt.bayreuth[DOT]de)

WHAT HAPPENED?
On Wednesday evening, August 29, 2018, at 22h, our education consultant Immaculate A. arrived in custody of deportation after 14 years in Germany and is to be deported to Uganda. Immaculate A. was locked away immediately after the hearing at the Administrative Court of Bayreuth, where a negative decision was made on her application for the right of residence. We are deeply shocked by this inhumane and brutal practice of the Free State of Bavaria. A. lived for years in Bayreuth, where she volunteered with “Bunt statt Braun – gemeinsam stark für Flüchtlinge e.V.” (“Colorful instead of brown – strong together for refugees”) and was also active nationwide as a glokal educational consultant, giving seminars and workshops critical of racism. We would like to make the underhanded deportation practice of the Free State of Bavaria public and demand that our colleague Immaculate A. be released and her application for residence recognized!

BACKGROUND
Yesterday at the Administrative Court of Bayreuth: Immaculate A. had her hearing before the Administrative Court because of her residence. She hoped that this would be granted under §25b of the Residence Act (Aufenthaltsgewährung bei nachhaltiger Integration).
One problem was that Immaculate A. did not have a valid passport for a long time. She had struggled for years to regain her passport, which proved to be a difficult and arduous undertaking. In 2017, an application for a stay under §25b was filed with the city through an attorney. This was rejected, and the appeal against the rejection was still pending. The Hardship Commission (HFK) gave the signal to wait and see what comes out of the appeal. The HFK can only become active if the residence has been rejected according to §25b AufenthG.
Two weeks ago Immaculate A. actually got her passport. After consultations with Caritas and her new lawyer, she took him to the Bayreuth city immigration office. Shortly thereafter came the invitation to the court hearing, scheduled for 29.08.2018.

Yesterday, the Administrative Court of Bayreuth made it clear that tolerations that come about because of passportlessness, as in the case of Immaculate A., do NOT count towards the eight years of residence that are considered a prerequisite for the applicability of §25b. The VG referred to a ruling of the VGH Bavaria (file number 19CE181628).
In court yesterday, Immaculate A. was repeatedly told that she had not cooperated in obtaining a passport. The accusation: identity concealment, thus no integration into the German legal system, thus no application of §25b.
The accusation of not being integrated into German society is not tenable: Immaculate A. was highly involved not only in her place of residence, Bayreuth, but throughout Germany. In addition to her work with “Bunt statt Braun”, she has co-organized educational events in Bayreuth and was active in the sewing café for refugees. She has also done educational work critical of racism nationwide at glokal e.V., studied economics at Kiron University (Open Higher Education for Refugees, Berlin), and has made repeated efforts to obtain a work permit. All of this played NO role in the trial.

The jury court retired for “deliberation,” only to announce shortly thereafter that the motion for a stay under §25b would NOT be granted. Immaculate A. and her colleagues from “Bunt statt Braun” were shocked and planned to prepare everything for the hardship commission with Caritas today, Thursday.
But when they left the courtroom, there were already two police cars in front of the door, as well as two security officers from the Administrative Court, several police officers and the three officers from the Bayreuth-Stadt Foreigners’ Office. A plainclothes officer asked Immaculate A. to come along. Her lawyer intervened immediately and then accompanied her client. Unlike in the asylum law (where the issuance of the judgment takes a few weeks), in the aliens law applied here, deportation can take place IMMEDIATELY.

These events indicate that the rejection of her request had already been decided and organized before the actual verdict.
Their friends were promised by a police officer that they could say goodbye. However, Immaculate A. was led into the police building and taken away through the back exit. The friends were later told that they had posed a security risk and that the police had therefore decided not to let them leave. Immaculate A. was taken to her accommodation, where she was given 10 minutes to pack her things. When their friends reached the shelter, they only saw the taillights of the departing police car. The board of “Bunt statt Braun” had asked the police officers to wait, but the senior police officer refused on the grounds that he had “private appointments later”.

We accuse the court and the Free State of Bavaria that Immaculate A. s verdict was already determined in advance and that she did not receive a trial based on the principles of the rule of law. Processes are timed so that deportation can take place in the evening. Especially in times of state elections, a particularly rigorous deportation practice is followed in Bavaria in order to gather votes on the right-wing fringe.

We demand that Immaculate A. be released and receive a residence permit according to §25b.

We hope for your support,

the glokal team