Churches as safe havens: How communities protect refugees from deportation

For more than 40 years, German churches have been offering refugees church asylum. But this is not a legal right. And the practice is increasingly being called into question by German authorities.

As the country’s previously welcoming refugee policy undergoes major change, the state's tolerance for church asylum is waning.

Anja is someone who has felt this shift. A pastor in a free church, she grants church asylum to people in her congregation who are threatened with deportation. How does she handle the difficult balancing act between extending charity, and obedience to the law?

The state of Bremen is considered a stronghold of church asylum: of almost 2,400 cases nationwide, 200 were registered here in 2024. Ironically, it was here in this liberal Hanseatic city that a scandal erupted during Advent last year: the Bremen Migration Office instructed police officers to remove a 25-year-old Somali man from church asylum for deportation to Finland, his first point of entry into the EU.

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