The Romeike family fled Germany in 2008 in order to homeschool their children in the United States. They are now being told they must return.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who now have seven children, faced challenges from a German government opposed to homeschooling and chose to flee to America, arriving in 2008. Five years later, the U.S. government granted the family “indefinite deferred action status,” allowing them to live, work, and remain in the United States.
For over a decade, the family has lived in Tennessee, free from the anti-homeschooling laws of the German government. Two of the children are American citizens by birth and two have married American citizens.
But earlier this month, the Biden Administration told the family they will be deported to Germany.
“They did not tell us anything. We don’t really know why [this is happening]. We wonder ourselves because we can’t understand,” Uwe told Fox News.
When the Romeike family lived in Germany, Uwe and Hannelore initially sent their children to the government school system, but soon became concerned with the curriculum.
One of the textbooks “promoted praying to the devil rather than God, disobeying your parents, and teachers as authorities,” Uwe said. “There were stories about witchcraft. The only thing I found about Christian belief was about bunnies and eggs for Easter.”
Homeschooling is essentially illegal in Germany, and exceptions to the law are rare.
Christianity Today reports that the family is still homeschooling the three youngest children, including two daughters that were born in the United States.
A return to Germany would mean facing the same strict homeschooling laws that led the family to flee.
The Home School Legal Defense Association, a group that helped the family apply for asylum in the past, said the “United States executive branch intervened once before to grant the Romeikes a respite, and it has the power to do it again.”
