Germany resumes deportations to Afghanistan despite COVID Germany is resuming deportations of rejected asylum-seekers to Afghanistan, which had been suspended with the first wave of coronavirus in March. The move has triggered fierce criticism. There is high security around every deportation flight Around 40 rejected asylum-seekers from Afghanistan have arrived in Kabul, according to Afghanistan's Refugee Affairs Ministry. Among them is a 21-year-old whom the German refugee organization Flüchtlingsrat Berlin describes as a heavily traumatized individual. The young Afghan was in a German prison for various petty crimes and was due to be released in January. "We don't want to belittle his crimes," the organization writes in a press statement. "But we think it is irresponsible of Germany — at a time of an international pandemic — to rid itself of an individual who came to Berlin as an underage refugee, after having suffered traumatizing events in his childhood."