The Cost of Coerced Returns in Germany

The report examines how the financial and administrative costs of coerced returns in Germany are high, complex, and systematically under-documented. It distinguishes between direct costs (such as implementation of return and reintegration programmes, deportation operations, detention, transportation, and escorts) and indirect costs (including the loss of prior integration investments, labour market impacts, and wider social effects), showing that available data do not allow for a genuine cost‑benefit analysis. Drawing on fragmented and often reluctant disclosures from parliamentary inquiries, audit reports, budget lines and EU sources, the analysis demonstrates how federal structures, strict data protection rules, heterogeneous reporting standards and dispersed budgetary practices obscure the full cost of return, even as individual deportation operations can reach tens of thousands of euros per person and pre‑removal detention adds further hidden expenditure.