The case concerned an appeal submitted by an applicant against an order to search at his former home for the purposes of apprehending him in order to implement a deportation threat. The applicant is a Turkish national whose subsequent asylum application was rejected by the BAMF by decision of 7 May 2024 and a threat of deportation was issued. The request for suspensive effect of the appeal against the threat for deportation was rejected. Other proceedings against the implementation of the deportation order are pending.

The BAMF requested on 11 October 2024 before the regional administrative court of Bremen an order to search the apartment occupied by the applicant on 15 October 2024, for the purposes of deportation. The court allowed the order on the same day as it found the conditions for deportation met. The search order was carried out and notified to the applicant who was also deported. On 16 October 2024, the applicant lodged a complaint against the search order, contesting the legality of the order. The Regional Administrative Court rejected the appeal. The applicant further appealed before the Higher Administrative Court.

The Higher Administrative Court of Bremen first ruled on the admissibility of the appeal against a search order. It stated that complaints against search orders are no excluded under Article 80 of the Asylum Law. It affirmed that according to Section 146 Paragraph 1 of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure, the parties involved and those otherwise affected by a decision have the right to appeal to the Higher Administrative Court against decisions of the administrative court that are not judgments or court orders. The search warrant contested here is a decision of the administrative court that is neither a judgment nor a court order.

The court interpreted that it is irrelevant in the assessment whether the deportation was based on the threat of deportation under immigration law or on the threat of deportation under asylum law. If the deportation was carried out on the basis of the threat of deportation under immigration law, Section 80 of the Asylum Act undoubtedly does not preclude the appeal. But even if the deportation was carried out on the basis of the threat of deportation under the asylum law, the exclusion of appeal under Section 80 of the Asylum Act does not apply. Precisely, the court considered that the wording of Article 80 (2) of the Asylum Act allows both a broad interpretation, which includes all measures to facilitate and prepare the deportation in the exclusion of appeal, and a narrow interpretation, which limits the exclusion of appeal to legal remedies against the deportation itself. However, the court stated that in its interpretation, the meaning and the purpose of Article 80 (2) of the Asylum Act is that search warrants to apprehend the person to be deported are not included in the exclusion of appeal. The intention of the regulation is to accelerate the return of rejected asylum seekers and the admissibility of the complaint is not precluded by the fact that the contested search warrant has already been executed.

On the merits of the appeal, the court found that the contested warrant was lawful and rejected the complaint as unfounded. It stated that the conditions of implementation of the deportation were met thus the purpose of the execution of the search order was lawful. It noted that there were two decisions for voluntary return which the applicant did not comply with and thus the surveillance of the departure was necessary since the applicant did not comply with the departure period set in those decisions.