Two young boys laugh as they fly across the cracked pavement on their scooters, racing past the 10-foot barbed wire fence, past the stern-faced security guards and CCTV cameras. Behind them, in the distance, the former airport’s control tower looms like a brutalist Foucaldian panopticon: all-seeing, ever-present. Just as the boys reach the overpass, an old grey BVG bus crosses it. According to its flickering orange display, switching between Latin and Cyrillic letters, it’s the special shuttle bus 410 en route to its final stop – the Ukraine Arrival Center TXL, or UA TXL.
Located along a remote highway on the northwestern outskirts of Berlin, Flughafen Tegel – once hailed as the most modern airport in the world – now houses nearly 5,500 refugees and asylum seekers, including the two boys, whose silver scooters are rattling on the asphalt as they rush over the bridge and out of sight. It’s about a 10-minute drive from nearby Jungfernheide station to the camp, and the shuttle buses are the only way in or out for its residents.
A security badge doesn’t qualify you to care for a deeply traumatised person.
Without them – and the big white tents, hidden away behind former Terminal C – the airport would look like any other largely abandoned place in this city: a secluded fortress of concrete and aluminium, no more than a vague memory of a bustling hub that once connected Berlin to the world. There is little outward indication that, despite an ongoing controversy around the camp, the area is set to be transformed into a high-tech research campus over the next few years, a new haven for business investors and universities, Berlin’s next big prestige project.
Unfit for purpose
When the Berlin Senate announced the development of a large-scale refugee camp in Tegel in the immediate wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, up to 10,000 refugees per day were pouring out of the trains at Berlin central station. In light of these “highly dynamic circumstances”, as then-mayor Franziska Giffey described the situation in March 2022, a hastily assembled arrival centre – equipped only with the bare necessities to offer incoming refugees shelter for a few days – appeared the most practical solution. Concerns were quickly raised about the quality of care the coalition of aid organisations running the camp would be able to provide.
Today, many residents have lived in the camp for months, not days. Of the 20,000 Ukrainian refugees initially registered at the arrival centre last year, about 15,000 are still housed in Berlin. The several thousand who stayed in Tegel have had to do so in spite of allegedly catastrophic conditions. Christiane Beckmann, managing director of the independent advocacy group Moabit Hilft e.V., says she has been in close daily contact with angered, disheartened and increasingly tired residents since its opening two and a half years ago. Her team offers emotional support, provides clothing, assists with paperwork and helps asylum seekers navigate the complicated and often lengthy application process.
“To our knowledge, there are no concepts for the protection of children, women or queer people in Tegel,” Beckmann explains. Part of the problem, she says, is a severe lack of psychological support in the camp. “You can’t feel safe there, and the staff are just not trained to deal with these situations. A security badge doesn’t qualify you to care for a deeply traumatised person.”
Residents of the refugee centre are currently housed in 16 large ‘lightweight structures’ (sturdier tents, basically), each containing dozens of makeshift sleeping units, comprising a few plastic walls and curtains. Crammed into a unit with up to 14 strangers, the residents – mostly Ukrainian war refugees, but also asylum seekers from other countries – are exposed to constant surveillance and a plethora of humiliating bureaucratic rules, Beckmann says.
“Privacy is virtually non-existent, and many residents complain about bed bugs and mice. You’re not allowed to take photos or videos. You’re constantly being watched. So many people have told us how vulnerable and helpless they feel there.” Having worked with refugees and aid organisations for years, her verdict is clear: “In our opinion, Tegel is completely unfit to house anyone under humane conditions.”
Regina Kneiding, a spokesperson for Wir Helfen Berlin, the aid coalition managing day-to-day operations at the camp under the leadership of the German Red Cross, acknowledges some of the criticism but highlights efforts to improve the situation. “Of course, the living situation in Tegel is not easy for the residents”, she said in a statement.
With Berlin’s other accommodations at maximum capacity, however, there simply isn’t anywhere else to transfer people – at least not without adopting less bureaucratic ways to quickly develop new housing first. A recent trial remodelling of one of the 16 housing structures is intended to improve the situation in the meantime. “We managed to enhance privacy by reducing the amount of people in the sleeping areas and installing curtains on beds,” Kneiding says. While the organisation supports “the retrofitting of all halls according to this model”, it is unclear when or whether that will happen.
Wir Helfen Berlin also rejects claims about inadequate psychological support in the camp, stating that Tegel does provide social and psychological counselling services: “That way, many of those in need can be referred to the regular social services in Berlin,” the organisation says. Moreover, Kneiding explains, “many clubs and organisations in which Berliners are active offer regular recreational and educational services on site”.
Ground control
Jess*, a former staff member at the Arrival Center, remembers the feeling of dread and claustrophobia hanging over the camp like an invisible veil. “When we toured the place on my first day, I was horrified,” she says. “People there are living in squalor, it’s crowded, it’s dirty, the air conditioning didn’t work. Just being there felt suffocating.” Her voice thickens when she talks about the camp. “At first, I told myself that this was important for me to see, that it was just the reality of the situation,” she says. “But after a month or so I understood that things don’t have to be that way.”
While Ukrainians were allowed to leave the camp for up to three days at a time, asylum seekers from other countries had to stay in Tegel every night.
Jess left Tegel after working there for close to a year, after realising that her real purpose as a staff member was not just to aid people, but to control them. “They gave us a checklist with all these rules,” she remembers. “People weren’t supposed to hang up any sheets on their bunk beds to create a little more privacy. They weren’t allowed to plug in any electronic devices in their rooms except for phones and laptops.” Due to the poor quality of the meals, provided by a single catering company specialising in school lunches, residents began hoarding their own food in the tiny lockers designated for private belongings, Jess says. “Eventually, we had a terrible fly infestation, so they forbid food in the lockers and units, too.”
While some of these regulations are in place to satisfy German fire safety and hygiene laws and ensure that the thousands of people in Tegel aren’t seriously endangered, they also deprived people of their dignity in a living situation that was much more long-term than originally intended, Jess says. “My intention was to help people, and here I was making their lives more difficult. When I worked there, I felt like shit all the time. But you only truly realise what this place does to you once you’re out of there.”
Rosa*, another former employee at the camp, says she witnessed conditions in Tegel steadily decline while residents’ stays involuntarily grew longer and longer. “Tegel was never meant as a permanent shelter,” she explains. “The idea was to have a central arrival point for refugees before transferring them to better housing in other parts of the country.”
But after complications with the bureaucratic labyrinth that is German migration law and the flat-out refusal by some federal states to take in the number of migrants previously agreed upon, Tegel became a more permanent solution for the city, even as the number of incoming refugees and asylum seekers steadily declines. Those who sought refuge in Tegel still find themselves caught in a limbo – stranded between the old home they had to leave due to war, fear of prosecution or poverty, and the new one they aren’t able to access. “When I left, some people had stayed there for up to a year,” Rosa says. “Nobody should have to stay in that place for that long.”
Both the former staff members who spoke to The Berliner describe a stifling atmosphere of constant and overbearing surveillance, similar to the one described in articles by Der Spiegel and taz. “There was security everywhere, watching, scaring people”, Rosa says. “It was like this constant demonstration of power.” Jess remembers the daily bed checks; twice a day, she recalls, staff members would walk around the sleeping quarters, methodically scanning their assigned area with a clipboard and pen, taking attendance.
While Ukrainians were allowed to leave the camp for up to three days at a time, asylum seekers from other countries had to stay in Tegel every night or risk getting ejected from the camp – making it a lot harder for them to integrate. “Of course, people can technically leave during the day if they want,” Jess says. “But if you’re constantly afraid of missing the bed check, you just end up never going out at all. It honestly felt like working at a prison sometimes.”
Integration is a human right, not a favour.
Asked about the purpose of Tegel’s strict security measures, which are overseen by the state-owned subcontractor Messe Berlin, Wir Helfen Berlin emphasises the necessity of such regulations to ensure resident’s safety. “The protection of women and children is a priority, which is reflected in our violence and child protection concepts,” their spokesperson says.
Rising Tensions
Staff members aren’t the only ones referring to the Arrival Centre as prison-like. Zana Aksu, a Kurdish journalist and human rights activist, lived in Tegel for almost five months. He describes his time in the camp as “living hell”. Refugees need to feel safe and protected to heal, Aksu says, “but people in Tegel are deprived of this fundamental right”.
He also describes frequent discrimination in the camp, as well as racist attacks committed by other residents and some members of the security staff. “Dozens of our friends were verbally and physically abused by security guards,” he claims. “We filed a complaint about these issues, but haven’t gotten an answer.”
Several widely reported incidents seem to back up his accounts about discrimination and violence in the camp. Video footage from November 2023 appears to show dozens of men at Tegel engulfed in a mass brawl. According to an investigation by taz, the incident was a targeted, unprovoked attack on Kurdish residents. The perpetrators, who reportedly stormed a housing structure in the middle of the night, allegedly included several members of the security staff. According to rbb, 55 employees responsible for the security in Tegel were let go shortly after the incident for not passing background checks or lacking formal qualifications.
Zana Aksu was present the night of the assault, he says. “As Kurdish refugees, we were attacked by a group of violent Islamists, our women were harassed, our children intimidated, our families torn apart.” A pregnant woman caught up in the attack later suffered a miscarriage, he claims. Aksu has since co-founded an initiative demanding the closure of the arrival centre and other refugee camps, and the strengthening of integration policies. “Refugees should be recognised as individuals who add value to society,” Aksu says. “Integration is a human right, not a favour.”
Not everyone agrees with him. The growing stigmatisation of refugees and asylum seekers is part of a nationwide shift toward a more hardline migration policy. With the war in Ukraine, economic insecurity and the success of right-wing populist parties across Europe, political discourse has largely veered from the Willkommenskultur of the Merkel era to closed-border policies and welfare cuts for asylum seekers. Those who are already here, it seems, are caught in the crossfire while trying to integrate.
“What really happens in Tegel is that refugees and asylum seekers are intentionally cut off from society,” Christiane Beckmann from Moabit Hilft e.V. alleges. Stuck in a place on the outskirts of the city – usually without a work permit – it’s consciously being made harder for asylum seekers and refugees to set foot in the city, Beckmann says. “There are residents who never leave the place. They have no social life, no one outside of the camp. How are these people ever going to feel at home here, be part of a community?”
Camp(us)
Besides official press events, the city government rarely comments on the conditions in Tegel. (The State Office For Refugee Affairs did not respond to request for comment for this story.) Instead, public debate continues to revolve around ideas for the future repurposing of the area – grand urban development plans that have been in the making for over a decade. When Tegel officially closed in 2020, the Senate had already put years into the development of a ‘masterplan’ for its subsequent use.
The current plan involves spending a total of €8 billion, coming from both public and private sources, on Tegel’s remodelling into an “Urban Tech Republic” – a hyper-modern, sustainable research and industrial campus the size of 300 football fields, where “science meets industry and trade, and start-ups meet investors”. The first companies are expected to move in by 2027, the city-owned development agency Tegel Project GmbH states. While the former main buildings will offer space for private companies and universities, the eastern parts of the former airport are intended to soon house a newly-built residential area.
In the meantime, part of the former airport is being temporarily rented out parallel to construction. Building H, a former cargo hall – shielded from the refugee camp by the hexagonal main building in between – houses an urban planning and event centre, as well as a handful of impact startups working on concepts including green energy, heat storage, sustainable materials, mobile greenhouses. Berlin brewery BRLO also plans to build a carbon-neutral brewery in the complex in the coming years.
Asked about the 16 overcrowded lightweight structures in front of Terminal C and their increasingly desperate inhabitants, current senator for urban development Christian Gaebler of the SPD said he does not believe the camp poses a problem for the advancement of the city’s prestige project. “We’ll just have to build around it,” Gaebler said at a press conference this summer. “It’s not pretty, but technically feasible.”
The refugee camp and the construction of the urban tech campus don’t currently clash, Tegel Project GmbH says, but it does pose a challenge. “We have to deal with aspects such as the location of the tents on a central access road, the strong media presence regarding the accommodation and its influence on marketing, as well as the logistical and security-related challenges of having people and a construction site in the same place,” a spokesperson for the agency explains. “And, of course, having a mass accommodation in the middle of a large active construction site with explosive ordnance clearance is not a desirable situation and requires special measures to ensure safety and the ability to work on site.”
No departure
When looking for possible causes for the conditions in the Arrival Center, it can be difficult to separate choices on the ground from a broader political climate increasingly favouring deterrence and isolation over integration. One aspect, however, is clear: money can hardly be an issue. According to a report by Der Spiegel from September 2024, the city has budgeted €463 million for UA TXL this year alone – enough to put up every single resident in a luxury hotel instead.
Due to company confidentiality, the report states, it’s not entirely clear how exactly parts of these funds are being used. Beckmann, however, has an idea. “There are organisations that run refugee camps like profit-maximising companies,” she says. “Every single human being is worth money – so they’re trying to cut costs. On food, on staff, on anything that could improve people’s lives there.”
Still, Beckmann remarks, attempts to close Tegel “immediately”, as some NGOs and local politicians are calling for, would be unrealistic. “Where would all these people go? What needs to be done is to improve the conditions on the ground and make sure that people are finally housed under humane conditions.”
Ultimately, few places embody Berlin’s cognitive dissonance as much as former Tegel airport. It’s a place where lawmakers and city planners continue to dream up visions of a sustainable, productive future, while thousands in need of help are housed in what many describe as disastrous conditions in the same place, here and now. “We all need security, work, community. So many people are deprived of these things right now – and then some go on and blame them for our problems, for costing too much, not integrating fast enough? If we don’t fix this, it’ll shatter our social fabric”, Beckmann says. “I really hope that we, as Berliners, can remember who we really are: open-minded people who stick together.”
Meanwhile, the Senate has decided to keep the Tegel camp open until at least the end of 2025. With plans to expand the camp, the number of women, men and children living there could soon rise to up to 8,000.
*Names changed or shortened for privacy
