No Border Assembly is relaunching the campaign Abschiebehaft Abschaffen Berlin/Brandenburg. A deportation prison (Abschiebehaft) is the place were people are locked up in the days or months before being deported. There are currently 15 deportation prisons in use around Germany and 3 more are in construction. Some of us get deprived of our freedom just for having received a negative response to an asylum application. If state violence against people of color and against those of us who migrated here is visible in many aspects of life, in this case it is even more evident. In these hidden cages of racist police violence, where people are taken after midnight deportation raids, people resist and fight to survive every day, often without anyone knowing what goes on inside those walls. We stand in solidarity with people resisting inside deportation prisons and promote any action & campaign that helps to end the practice of deportation prisons.
Today, we have launched a page on our website, listing all deportation prisons currently in Germany, their addresses, contact details, visiting hours as well as which social workers, legal counceling or activist groups are active around each prison. We have also indicated which prisons are being built or extended. We hope this overview can be used to increase prisoner solidarity and fuel more anti-prison actions.
One of the prisons planned for expansion is located right here in Berlin/Brandenburg, in Schönefeld near BER airport. Planned to be finished in 2025, Brandenburg in cooperation with the German national government is constructing what they call an “arrival & departure center”, replacing the current Ausreisegewahrsam with 7 new buildings, which will include a massive expansion of the current deportation prison. We will fiercely stand against the construction of this new prison!
This campaign against deportation prisons is for us a part of the fight against all prisons. Prisons cannot be reformed: we demand the total closure of all prisons. We see prisons as part of a capitalist, colonial system where those of us who are unwanted are violently removed from society. Deportations, prisons and racism have a long history together in Germany and Europe.
We reject the division into good and bad prisoners, but question the whole concept of prisons. Therefore we also stand against the deportation prison in Berlin-Lichtenrade, where people are locked up who Germany perceives as a threat or have been deemed to commit a crime. People not fitting this category are also kept there before their deportation, allegedly for a maximum of 24 hours. Prisons and deportation are never a solution for problems in society, but a reflection of a system of alienation and oppression towards any of us who do not benefit from colonialism and capitalism.
Therefore we call anyone in Berlin to join us and struggle against the deportation prisons in Schönefeld and Lichtenrade as well as the planned expansion of the Schönefeld prison. For a world without prisons!