Nightly deportation: Father is very worried about family: "Children cry all the time"

Created: 07/18/2022, 18:01

By: Christiane Breitenberger

Deported in the middle of the night: the Esiovwa family.

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The deportation of a well-integrated family from Karlsfeld to Nigeria continues to make waves.

Principals, teachers, children and parents are angry, desperate and appalled.

Dachau – The pictures she painted were always so colourful, so happy.

Six-year-old Claudia was a happy child at the Greta Fischer School.

But from one day to the next her place in the classroom remained empty, "our sunshine", as her teacher calls him, could no longer come to school because she was with her brother Gabriel (10), her sister Stefanie (11) and her seriously ill parents was deported to Nigeria in the middle of the night.

Until that night, the well-integrated family had lived in the Dachau district since 2015.

Claudia was born in Dachau, Karlsfeld was her home, now she is in a foreign country for her, instead of playing with her classmates.

Her seat remained empty.

Her pencil case is still there.

Deportation of a family: Father is very concerned about the health of his wife and children

It's like a nightmare that Claudia's father, Nicholas Esiovwa, just can't wake up from.

At the moment the family is in Lagos, a quarantine hotel with other deportees.

"The children cry all the time, they are desperate," he says.

But Nicholas Esiovwa is not only worried about his children, but also about his wife.

She has "severe abdominal pain".

According to him, his wife was to be operated on on July 13, just one day after his family was taken to the airport by the police at night for their deportation flight.

"My wife showed the officials the note with the appointment, they took the note away from her," wrote Nicholas Esiovwa in a message to supporters in Germany.

The editors of the Dachauer Nachrichten have medical certificates and a referral to a specialized tumor center.

For data protection reasons, the clinic is currently unable to answer questions about the date of the operation planned by the family.

The family felt safe.

At an appointment at the district office, they were assured that the deportation should be suspended so that Faith Esiovwa could have an operation.

The district office denies that there was such an agreement.

In addition, the district office was not aware of any tumor disease.

District Administrator Stefan Löwl emphasizes that the write-off is legal.

Nicholas Esiovwa does not know how to proceed.

He first tried to reach a relative.

Unsuccessful.

"We only have 40 euros with us, you can't access the German account from Nigeria," he writes.

He also has health problems with his autoimmune disease.

Nightly deportation of a family: school directors, teachers, children and parents are stunned

The deportation of the family leaves many people in the Dachau district angry and horrified.

Viktoria Ledermann, the principal of the Greta Fischer School, where Claudia attended the preschool class, is stunned.

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Gabriel was also at her school for three years until a few weeks ago.

"How can you just so brutally rip out children who have come such a long way?" She describes Claudia as a happy, loving child who was happy at school.

"She always cared about her classmates and integrated everyone while playing - she keeps the whole class together." Now only her colorful pictures are hanging on the wall there.

Cornelia Benkert, Gabriel's former teacher, is also shocked.

She knows how his classmates are now after they found out that their friend was deported: "They are really upset." When Gabriel changed schools at the time, "they didn't really want to let him go, they said: Gabriel belongs us”, says the teacher, but his classmates wished him that he would be happy.

"But they just don't understand that he's supposed to be completely gone now - and it breaks our hearts."

"Bring them home!": Demonstration with a fundraiser at the Dachau pier

Stefan Haas, a member of the Dachau pier, is also horrified by the deportation.

He has been involved in refugee aid for many years.

But he doesn't just want to feel helpless and horrified.

That's why the Seebrücke Dachau is organizing a demonstration with a fundraiser tomorrow, Wednesday, under the motto "Bring them home!

The Esiovwa family is one of us!” in front of the Dachau town hall.

It is a demonstration against the "inhumane deportation and for the return of the Esiovwa family to their homeland: here to us," as they say.

Haas wants the case to be processed and cleared up.

"Everyone can imagine what the picture of the empty table looks like when children suddenly stop coming to school."

Things like that "happens when children die, but it happened here because we have an agency here that just looks stubbornly at its paragraphs, no matter what's behind them."

He wants to understand how such a decision could come about.

It can't be that children who can't defend themselves and sick parents are deported, "and everyone acts as if that were completely normal".

For him it is clear: "Mistakes must have happened here and now we have to answer for them!"

He also thinks of the children's friends who now have to look at the empty space in the classroom.

“Now who is going to sit down in this seat and tell them what happened?

Is that Mr. District Administrator Löwl?

Does the head of the immigration office do that?”

Haas wants answers to his questions.

With regard to the children in particular, he emphasizes: "These are people who belong to us, to where they grew up, to where their friends are." Friends who now have to do without them on their birthdays.

Like Emma.

She invited Gabriel to her ninth birthday party.

The invitation is a cloud with colorful rainbow stripes - but as much as Gabriel would have liked to celebrate with Emma in a few days - his place at the table will remain empty.

"Bring her home!"

The demonstration under the motto "Bring them home!

The Esiovwa family is one of us!” will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, at 7 p.m. at Rathausplatz in Dachau and is being organized by the Seebrücke association.

Among others, SPD member of the Bundestag Michael Schrodi speaks.

By the way: everything from the region is also available in our regular Dachau newsletter.

You can find more current news from the district of Dachau at Merkur.de/Dachau.