It is routine for the German federal government to condemn violence against foreigners when the violence is committed by neo-Nazis and racists on the street. The government, moreover, rarely misses an opportunity to call for expanded state powers and restrictions on democratic rights on the pretext of combating the neo-Nazis. The systematic violence against refugees carried out by the German state apparatus is one aspect of the policies of the European Union, which find their most violent expression on the borders of Germany, particularly those separating Germany from Poland and the Czech Republic.
German authorities are especially brutal in the measures they employ before and during deportations.
The border regime Based on the Shengen agreement reached in 1991, the states of the European Union have erected a system to make the frontiers of the EU as impenetrable as possible. Thus every refugee who reaches Germany by land is automatically an illegal refugee. But today it is German border patrols, with the aid of modern technologies and packs of tracker dogs, that prevent refugees from coming into the country. A direct consequence of the border regime is the death of refugees who, lacking the legal sanction to come to Germany, attempt to cross the Oder or Neisse rivers. Most of them drowned, others died from exposure, heart attacks or traffic accidents while trying to escape the police.