German authorities have revealed that in the past five years, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has procured replacement travel documents for the departure of foreign nationals in a total of 7,557 cases.
According to the office’s response to a query by the Tagesspiegel, the procurement of these documents was not successful or goal-oriented in roughly half of the cases, spanning from 2020 to 2024. The BAMF procures these documents as part of its assistance to the states, which request them for specific countries of origin and for three federal states in their entirety. In the process, the office organizes collective hearings with experts from the relevant countries to identify the nationalities of the individuals in question.
In the years from 2020 to 2024, the office reportedly procured 511 documents in 2020, 1,491 in 2021, 1,422 in 2022, 1,833 in 2023 and 2,200 in 2024. The documents were subsequently made available to the federal states responsible for further implementation.
However, in more than half of the cases, the effort was not goal-oriented – either because the departure did not occur, the outcome remained unclear, or the individuals in question eventually presented their own documents. The BAMF stated that it is not responsible for the outcome of these cases.
In concrete terms, this was the case in 57% of the 7,557 requests for assistance submitted to the BAMF between 2020 and 2024. 28% of the requests failed due to the issuance of a residence permit or a ban on deportation by the responsible federal state. In 21% of the cases, the whereabouts of the foreign nationals in question had been unknown for more than two years and in 12% of the cases, the individuals presented their own travel documents.