Mother in Germany separated from one-year-old son over Palestinian activism
►https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-activist-germany-separated-child-say-lawyers
23.6.2025 by Dania Akkad - Supporters say Palestinian-Jordanian woman’s case is one of the harshest examples of how the German state is weaponising residency issues to repress Palestinian solidarity
A Palestinian-Jordanian woman with German residency was separated from her one-year-old after German authorities deemed the child a security threat, she and her lawyers say.
The European Legal Support Centre, which is supporting her case, say the woman is the latest victim of the German state’s weaponisation of residency issues to repress Palestinian solidarity.
Since 2019, the Amsterdam-based legal advocacy group has documented at least 22 incidents in Germany in which residency status or restrictions to freedom of movement have been used to stifle such solidarity.
“The German state systematically exploits residence, asylum and citizenship law to punish already marginalised communities,” said an ELSC spokesperson.
“There is no justification for separating a newborn from his parents, yet to label the child a ‘security threat’ marks a grotesque new low, even by their own oppressive standards."
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A trained nurse, Dima* moved from Jordan to Germany in 2017 for work, and was joined four years later by her husband. In 2023, they had their first child.
In August 2024, when her child turned one, the family travelled to Jordan so that Dima and her husband’s parents could meet their grandchild for the first time.
As they tried to board a return flight two weeks later, Dima was told that her son lacked the necessary permit to re-enter Germany.
At the time, her lawyers say, the German embassy in Jordan suggested it was a minor bureaucratic matter that could be solved in a few weeks.
When Dima had applied for permanent residency back in October 2023, she and her husband had received green certificates that allow holders to exit and re-enter Germany while they wait for a permanent residency card.
Their son was also given a green residency certificate which looked exactly the same as his parents, but did not allow for entry or exit.
Security threat
But the issue wasn’t so simple: four months later, the embassy said in a letter that Dima’s son was not allowed to go back to Germany because he had been deemed a security threat.
Ebru Akcan Asilturk, Dima’s Frankfurt-based immigration lawyer who became involved in the case around this time, said she assumed, when she read the letter, there had been a mistake.
“I thought, ‘OK, this is obviously a misunderstanding we can solve directly’,” she said.
But in December 2024, Germany’s migration office sent another letter clarifying that there was, in fact, an issue with Dima, not her son.
’I didn’t say anything that is considered a red line. I always went to demonstrations that were accepted by the authorities in Germany’
- Dima*, Palestinian-Jordanian mother
Dima also learned through the letter for the first time that the Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, was investigating her.
The probe is ongoing and would have been triggered by her permanent residency application nearly two years ago, her lawyers have said.
Dima has been told by authorities that she is being investigated because of her alleged involvement with Palestinian solidarity groups, including Samidoun Deutschland, an organisation that Germany banned in November 2023.
She contends that all of her Palestinian activism in Germany has been legal.
“I didn’t say anything that is considered a red line. I always went to demonstrations that were accepted by the authorities in Germany. I always registered whatever action I wanted to do,” she said.
Instead, she believes the case is an attempt to suppress her point of view and reflective of a wider crackdown on activists like her in Germany.
“They don’t have freedom of speech. It’s only there if you agree with what they say,” she said.
Both Dima and Asilturk say they believe that authorities took advantage of the problem with Dima’s son’s certificate not allowing for his exit and re-entry into Germany as an excuse to put the family in an impossible position that would force them to give up their residency.
A request for comment from the German foreign ministry was not answered. A spokesperson for the domestic intelligence authorities said that as a matter of principle, they do not comment publicly on individuals.
Hard choices
The family has been left in a precarious position.
This February, in response to an urgent appeal that Asilturk filed in November 2024, the administrative court in Berlin ruled that Dima’s son’s re-entry to Germany was not a matter of urgency.
“They said the son is in Jordan. He cannot come back to Germany, but the parents can go back to Germany and they can visit him,” Asilturk said.
’My child started calling anyone in the street papa. Unfortunately, he will call anyone mama as well’
- Dima*, Palestinian-Jordanian mother
“Or they can stay in Jordan with him and wait until the main proceedings.”
But if Dima stayed in Jordan, she would lose her residence card, said Asilturk who has appealed the decision in the Higher Administrative Court Berlin-Brandenburg.
Meanwhile, the family was separated for nine months in total, as Dima and her husband took turns leaving their son with family to try to maintain their lives in Germany.
These were nine particularly crucial months, Dima said. Her son was still breastfeeding while also starting, at the age of one, to become less emotionally attached to her and having a closer relationship with his father.
“My child started calling anyone in the street papa. Unfortunately, he will call anyone mama as well. He doesn’t have the grasp. He lost it,” Dima said.
A decision on Asilturk’s appeal at the higher court is expected imminently.
Meanwhile, the ELSC has filed a challenge with the Federal Constitutional Court challenging the administrative court’s handling of Dima’s case.
The outcome could help protect other families from experiencing this in the future, something Dima said she is determined to see through.
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“I’m sure, if this has happened to me, this has happened to many families before. It doesn’t matter if they are Palestinian or something else. I don’t think they were able to fight it in court because they didn’t have the support,” she said.
“But I don’t believe that this has never happened. In the current situation, I don’t believe it was a first. I just believe that I was the first one to have that support to fight it.”
Dima is the first generation of her family that was not born in Palestine, where her mother’s family was forced to leave in 1948 and her father’s in 1967.
She hoped to move at some point to Palestine, but with only her Jordanian passport, she said she would probably not be able to do that.
Still she said she felt the activism she has done in Germany, which was much more she said than she would have been allowed in Jordan, has made her feel like she already made it to Palestine somehow.
“I felt in Palestine sometimes, with the atmosphere around me, by the chants we used to chant. I felt it was so close to Palestine in ways. It was never like that in Jordan,” she said.
“This is the hardest part to be honest.”
* A pseudonym has been used to protect the identity of the mother during the ongoing legal challenge.
