Kompass-newsletter No. 141 - 02/2026

6 February 2026 transnational: CommemorActions +++19 February 2026 – 6th anniversary of the racist terrorist attack in Hanau, mourning Ibrahim Akkuş +++ 21 February in Stuttgart: Demonstration on country elections – End racist social policies +++ 6 to 8 March in Darmstadt: Meeting of We'll Come United +++ Maldusa on current developments in Sicily and Lampedusa +++ Alarm Phone Sahara on desert deportations from Algeria to Niger +++ Planned return hubs – deportation centres in Uganda? +++ Recommended reading on the situation in Iran, Syria and Rojava +++ WoZ on ICE in Minneapolis – resistance has an impact +++ Regularisation in Spain +++ Open borders – mission impossible? – two articles worth reading from the taz +++ Outlook: 19 March in Leipzig: ‘No Border lasts forever’ – book presentation by We'll Come United; 26/27 March in Hamburg: kritnet conference; 28 March in Valetta: protest action marking 7 years of criminalisation of the El Hiblu 3; 12-14 June in Jena: „Entgrenzt“ (debordered) – first migration law conference

Dear friends,

A slightly longer foreword at the start of the year.

6 February marks the 12th anniversary of the Tarajal massacre, and in this reference once again CommemorActions will take place in dozens of cities across Africa and Europe: commemorative and protest events against the deadly EU border regime.

Those responsible for death at borders are working already on the next tightening measures. On 12 June 2026, GEAS, the so-called Common European Asylum System, is set to come into force – with new detention centres and accelerated asylum procedures with limited legal protection, with supposedly safe third countries and chain deportations, with extended ‘Dublin’ deadlines and possible „crisis“ regulations.  

In addition, despite all the failures with Rwanda and Albania, the racist agitators from the interior ministries – with Germans Dobrindt at the forefront – are committed to setting up ‘return hubs’. For outsourced deportation centres, they are relying on rulers in Uganda or other African countries to initiate a further wave of deprivation of rights and deterrence.

The official implementations and new deportation deals will not be stopped by protests and campaigns in view of the continuing racist anti-migration sentiment. And we must even ask ourselves whether Minneapolis – the deportation raids carried out under Trump with completely unrestrained and deadly force by ICE officers – is emerging as a picture of the future for Europe.

However, we also know from the experiences of recent decades that it is possible to undermine the implementation of racist exclusion policies through concrete everyday resistance and to counter them in many small struggles. Strengthening and expanding the necessary structures within and with the communities of those affected appears to us to be a central challenge for the coming months and years. It is important to take up again and further develop the approaches and ideas of Solidarity Cities.

And what would a Kompass issue be in the new year without possibilistic voices in the introduction? On the one hand, we refer to the exciting developments in Spain, where a strong, continuous regularisation campaign is currently celebrating a historic success. According to estimates, the decree passed a few days ago will enable between 500,000 and 800,000 undocumented migrants – ‘Sin Papeles’ – to legalise their status. Let us quote the daily newspaper (taz) for the first time: ‘While in the USA even children are now being kidnapped and people shot, we are granting legal residence status,’ announced Podemos MEP Irene Montero, with a view to the USA... 

And we include two further quotes from the taz, from an interview and a guest commentary from December 2025, both well worth reading against the zeitgeist, characterised by a „militant" or historical optimism:

"Many progressive people feel powerless right now. Times are bad. But we must not succumb to pessimism. Ernst Bloch spoke of optimism with a black ribbon. We are sad, even shocked, by the world, the brutality and the suffering. But that is precisely why we must maintain a militant optimism. We must continue our emancipatory work. At some point, this will shift the broader socio-historical context again, and new opportunities will arise.“ (Fabian Georgi on 21 December 2025 in the Taz newspaper under the title: „Open borders are very much achievable").

„Law restricts rights; it can be unjust. And although law seems so ´normal, it is not a given; it can and must be changed again and again. This also applies to the right of residence. The law has often been used to deny people their rights. Apartheid in South Africa was a legal system. Slavery was also legal for a long time. Apartheid and slavery should not be equated here with current border law, but rather point to a fundamental commonality: all these legal systems served to exclude people and curtail their rights – in full compliance with the law. They separated the privileged from others who had no rights. And all of them exercised massive, often deadly violence. Slavery and apartheid were eventually recognised as wrong and abolished. The impossible was conceived, and in the end, the insight prevailed that both systems were deeply inhumane. So it is possible to abolish (in)justice. It is not easy and it took a long time. Let us imagine that talk shows had existed during the era of slavery. Such a talk show would have discussed slavery, and a plantation owner, a slave trader, a high-ranking colonial official, and the owner of a trading company would have been invited to participate. And, as an exotic guest, an abolitionist who wanted to abolish slavery. The abolitionist was laughed at by the others. Totally crazy, abolishing slavery? How is that supposed to work? The slaves belong to the plantation owners, they are their property! The law protects property! Slaves are not even capable of taking care of themselves. If they were set free, chaos and crime would ensue. Who else would do the work on the plantations? Without slavery, the price of sugar would skyrocket, resulting in inflation and a shortage of raw materials! Everyone except the abolitionist agreed that this would threaten a global economic crisis. And why talk about abolishing slavery at all? It has always existed; that is the law and order of the world…" (Martin Sökefeld on 30 December 2025 under the title ’Open Borders – Mission Impossible?`)

In this abolitionist spirit – for a rebellious 2026.

The Kompass Crew