The Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is campaigning on a dedicated “deportation police” unit.
Two days before the Sept. 20 state election, the party’s platform calls for a “border and deportation” police to be created explicitly to return foreigners. The new unit would be created inside the state police.
The unit’s stated tasks would include fighting illegal migration, human smuggling and other cross-border crime. The AfD says it would draw on existing structures and experience from the state police, the federal police and customs officers.
The party also pledges a detention center for people slated for deportation and a facility for foreigners required to leave Germany. The AfD candidate for minister-president in the state, Leif-Erik Holm, has publicly confirmed that he wants more deportations and special police forces to carry them out.
Instead of an initial reception center, “we need an exit center and we will establish one,” Holm told around 400 attendees in the city of Grimmen.
AfD federal chairman Tino Chrupalla was also present during the speech.
Most polls have AfD leading the election with between 37 and 38 percent of the vote, but a poll released yesterday by ZDF indicates that the AfD is now one point behind the Social Democrats (SPD), which is at 37 percent.
MECKLENBURG-VORPOMMERN | Sonntagsfrage Landtagswahl Forschungsgruppe Wahlen/ZDF
SPD: 37% (+3)
AfD: 36% (-1)
LINKE: 9% (-1)
CDU: 6% (-1)
GRÜNE: 5%
BSW: 4%
Sonstige: 3%
Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 11. September 2026
Verlauf: https://t.co/UMgk9Dtnf7#ltwmv pic.twitter.com/UTM9GlIRAF
— Deutschland Wählt (@Wahlen_DE) September 17, 2026Top officials within the police have already shot back at the AfD despite the German police’s abysmal deportation record.
The Union of Criminal Police Officers (BDK) issued a statement titled “Nobody needs deportation police.”
The BDK argues that responsibilities are already assigned: state police help carry out deportations, while the main duty sits with the relevant foreigners’ offices. Coordination problems between agencies, the union says, can be fixed without creating another unit.
Eike Bone-Winkel, BDK chairman in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, accused the AfD of “deportation fanaticism” and called the proposal politically and legally hard to implement. The union also noted that the U.S. agency ICE has become a reference point in the debate around the AfD plan.
One thing is certain. The German government and German law enforcement have failed at every single level in their efforts not only to deport foreigners who have been issued a deportation order, but also to protect citizens from repeat criminal offenders within this category. The result has been tens of thousands of victims of assaults, robberies, murders, rapes, and other serious offenses. Currently, there are at least 258,000 migrants with open deportation orders who have been ordered to leave the country but have not yet left.
Much is riding on the Sept. 20 election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommen. Political observers are not only anxious to see if the AfD comes in first or second, but the result of the Christian Democrats (CDU) is also extremely important. In the ZDF poll, the CDU is at 6 percent, just slightly above the pivotal 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. If the CDU falls below 5 percent, it would reignite calls for Chancellor Friedrich Merz to resign, including from his own party.
