Austria Steps Up Deportations Under Tougher Enforcement Policy
VIENNA – Austria has carried out another deportation of an Afghan national convicted of serious crimes, underlining a tougher enforcement policy announced by the federal government. Late on Tuesday night, a 33-year-old Afghan man was flown from Austria via Istanbul directly to Kabul, where he was formally handed over to Afghan authorities by Austrian officials.
The man had entered Austria in July 2015 and spent nearly half of his time in the country behind bars. Over a period of more than ten years, he was convicted six times by Austrian courts, including for repeated serious violent offenses. Police records show nine criminal entries against him. In total, he served around five years in Austrian prisons.
After completing his most recent sentence, the authorities immediately placed him in detention pending removal and proceeded with his deportation. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the man had been identified last year by a visiting delegation from the Afghan administration in Vienna. On that basis, Afghan authorities issued a so-called return certificate, allowing the deportation to be carried out on a technical and operational level.
Notably, Austria’s Federal Administrative Court had already ruled in October 2018 that the man’s deportation was lawful. However, the removal was not enforced at the time. In the years that followed, he committed further crimes, a fact that has since fueled political criticism and renewed calls for stricter enforcement of court decisions.
Interior Minister Gerhard Karner described the deportation as part of a broader strategy. He said the government’s “deportation offensive” would continue and that removals to countries such as Afghanistan and Syria were gradually moving from exceptional cases to standard practice. According to Karner, public safety and the rule of law require that serious offenders who have no legal right to remain must leave the country.
The announcement comes shortly after the government released deportation figures for 2025. For the first time in Austria’s postwar history, more than 14,000 criminal offenders and people staying in the country illegally were deported in a single year, marking a record high and signaling a decisive shift in Austria’s migration and security policy.
