Somali refugee Said Musa Mudhallib, 31, stands outside the Saint Familia church in Kassel, Germany. (Adam Berry/For the Washington Post)

By Anthony Faiola

KASSEL, Germany — Somali asylum seeker Ismail Mohamed Hassan, 22, awoke one nippy morning to an early knock at his refugee center door. It was the state police bearing two unpleasant gifts — a one-way ticket out of Germany and a car ride to Frankfurt Airport. This was it, he recalls thinking. Deportation.

Unless he could find a way to stop it.

Germany is ground zero in Europe’s migrant crisis, a nation set to receive up to 1 million asylum seekers this year, far more than any other country in the region. Yet, like Hassan, after risking their lives by land and sea to reach the continent’s economic powerhouse, about one in every two asylum seekers is initially rejected. It has made asylum a numbers game. In Germany, 86 percent of Syrians are being granted some form of refugee status, as are 82 percent of Iraqis and 80 percent of Eritreans. Only 30 percent of Afghans are making the cut. For those coming from Kosovo and Albania, the acceptance rate stands at almost zero.

But if Hassan’s story suggests the trials set to face hundreds of thousands of rejected asylum seekers — two stressful years spent in a bureaucratic nightmare trying to stay — it also offers them a ray of hope. While vast numbers of migrants like him are being rejected, far fewer are actually being deported.

The road to asylum VIEW GRAPHIC

Saying its generous system has become an incentive for more and more migrants to rush into Europe or die trying, Germany is preparing a new crackdown on those it says should leave. That has thrust this nation of 81 million to the center of the debate over perhaps the biggest question of the crisis: Of the hundreds of thousands of migrants coming, who gets to stay?

Even in the United States, deportation cases of undocumented migrants can linger for years. But because the migrants coming to Europe in dramatic waves are largely applying for legal asylum, they are benefiting from a catalogue of appeals and pseudo-statuses including a precarious right to remain that is simply called “toleration.” If they can stall long enough, German codes potentially allow them to beat the system and win permanent residency. And even when deportation orders come through, there are ingenious ways around them.

Hassan was one of the unlucky ones. A lithe construction worker with scars on his body he says came from a 2011 al-Shabab bomb blast in Mogadishu, he is one of the untold thousands being rejected without even a review of his case. That’s because, like most of the hopeful refugees arriving here, he first entered Europe in a different country. In his case, it was Bulgaria, a no man’s land for migrants where he was slapped in jail. Under E.U. law, Germany does not have to listen to his claim. It can just send him back.

It tried to do just that on the cold December morning last year when police hauled him to Frankfurt Airport.

But once aboard a flight, Hassan managed to block his deportation. German policies restrict the use of force during expulsions, and some deportees have taken to kicking and screaming inside plane cabins to thwart take-off. Hassan said he merely informed the crew that he was leaving involuntarily. The result: Citing a possible safety risk, the pilot allowed him to disembark. With no grounds to detain Hassan further under German law, frustrated authorities released him.

Back in Kassel, his lawyer found him a shield against another deportation attempt: Church asylum. Hassan packed up and moved into a welcoming Catholic church. There are no laws offering legal sanctuary in churches. But such protection is a German tradition dating to the Middle Ages, and officials here have been loath to challenge it. For Hassan, it might be a solid plan. If he can avoid deportation for four more months, a loophole in the asylum law would compel the German government to hear the merits of his case. Because the Germans — citing logistical and safety issues — are generally not deporting Somalis to their home country, he has a good chance of being allowed to stay.

“I cannot go back to Somalia,” Hassan said inside the tranquil rectory of St. Familia Catholic Church, a sanctuary he rarely leaves for fear of being arrested. “It is too dangerous there. I won’t go back.”

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Source: The Washington Post