Berlin/Cottbus, Germany – Germany is preparing for high-stakes elections, amid fears that far-right sentiment rising while migration policies sit at the centre of political debate.

In Cottbus, a city in eastern Brandenburg, the mood is tense as voters prepare to head to the polls with the rest of Germany on February 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government led by his Social Democratic Party (SPD) collapsed last November.

Outside the city centre, Jana Zistel, a German resident in Cottbus, is not sure which party to support, but is certain of her stance against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has skyrocketed in popularity among eastern cities.

“Yes, I know many people are big supporters of the AfD here, but I just don’t understand it. Germans, too, are foreigners in other places,” she told Al Jazeera.

Known for its anti-migration views, the group’s success marks the first time in decades that a far-right party in Germany has gained such popularity.

According to the latest polls, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is leading the polls, followed by AfD. Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) is in third place.

“The overall atmosphere is rather tense in Germany at the moment, and refugees do feel the changing attitude towards them,” said Judith Wiebke, a spokesperson for PRO ASYL, a German pro-immigration group.

Wiebke told Al Jazeera that fear in immigrant communities has been rising as the election nears.

“We get the feedback that in the Syrian community, there is new fear for their future in Germany, and the Afghan community [too,] is worried with regards to calls for regular deportation flights to Afghanistan,“ she said.

The firewall crumbles?

Migration is a contentious topic in the European Union, with leaders of the 27-member bloc often squabbling over how to implement a unified migration and asylum policy.

Germany has, however, maintained a relatively open-door policy for migrants. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel of the CDU/CSU party declared in 2015: “Wir schaffen das!” or “We can do it!” and welcomed hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers. But the CDU/CSU has since soured on immigration.

Chancellor Scholz’s government has, since 2022, eased the process of acquiring German residency and citizenship, easing the path for migrants and refugees and prompting criticism from political opponents.

CDU/CSU party leader Friedrich Merz called the policies “misguided”.

On the campaign trail, he blamed those policies for a recent spate of deadly attacks that has rocked the country and killed many people. In the latest case last week, a two-year-old girl and her mother were killed in Munich when a car rammed into a crowd. Nationals from Afghanistan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have been arrested for the killings.

In January, following one such attack, Merz proposed a non-binding resolution in the German Parliament to turn back more asylum seekers at the borders. It passed, but with the backing of the AfD. That shattered a seemingly impenetrable “firewall” policy that had seen parties refuse to work with the far right for decades.

Parliament narrowly rejected Merz’s binding version of the migration bill but shocked opposition leaders accused him in impassioned speeches of breaking the firewall. Even Merkel, the former chancellor who had otherwise been absent from politics, condemned her fellow CDU colleague. Thousands of people across Germany took to the streets in protest, calling for an AfD ban.

Scholz’s government, too, has begun stiffening asylum regulations. In August, 28 Afghans were deported. His government has also introduced land border checks, unusual in the EU.

The effects of these measures are already being felt.

Carolina Rehrmann, a parliamentary candidate of MERA25, an independent German political party, told Al Jazeera that there is a general climate of insecurity for immigrants in Germany that makes people not voice their opinions openly.

“They are being stigmatised and labelled as a collective threat, particularly by the far right,” she added.

Anything but the current government

Founded in 2013, the AfD first became popular with eurosceptics as it initially campaigned against the EU member states’ decision to bail out debt-ridden Greece – including Germany.

Then, in 2015, as waves of asylum seekers moved into Europe, AfD rhetoric swung to immigration, and the perceived dangers of Muslim migrants.

“Remigration” – a policy that would see mass deportations of immigrants and naturalised citizens; scrapping of the euro; and military conscription are some of the party’s major promises.

Led by Alice Weidel, the AfD’s stronghold is in eastern cities like Cottbus because of perceived economic inequalities between east and west Germany following reunification, which has left popular anger. The party also managed to tap into a young audience by maintaining a strong TikTok presence.

“It’s a protest vote because people are frustrated,” said Ines Heider, parliamentary candidate for the Revolutionary International Organisation (RIO), an independent group promising open borders and an end to weapons for Israel. German media calls the group “left extremist”.

“Zero percent of Germans want this present government to run again, and so they search for an alternative. The other day, I went to a strike of bus drivers, and one of them said to me, ‘I don’t really like the AfD, but I don’t really know who else to vote for,’” she said.

In January, AfD shocked the country when its regional branch in southwestern Karlsruhe city mailed more than 30,000 fake deportation tickets to migrants. The tickets, dated February 23, said a passenger by the name of “illegal immigrant” was booked on a one-way flight from Germany to a “safe country of origin.”

Marcel Bauer, The Left party’s parliamentary candidate in Karlsruhe, told Al Jazeera that people who received the tickets, ranging from Cameroonian to Syrian nationals, were devastated.

“There were grown men crying to me because they fear for their families after receiving these tickets,” Bauer, who has filed a lawsuit against AfD’s spokesperson in Karlsruhe, said. “For the far right, every migrant is a bad person,” he added.

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) sent deportation train tickets to Jews before the second world war, Bauer said. Now, the AfD is using similar “fascist” methods, he added.

AfD did not respond to a request for comment. MP Marc Bernhard, the party’s Karlsruhe candidate, told German public broadcaster SWR that the distribution of the tickets was an election advertising stunt for everyone and was not specifically sent to people with “foreign-sounding names”.

Rarely do any of the parties, even the outgoing SPD-led coalition, highlight contributions of migrants to the German economy, allowing the AfD’s rhetoric to hold ground, said Marc Helbling, professor of political sociology at the University of Mannheim.

If foreigners were to all leave, Germany’s building and health sectors, among others, would simply stop working, Helbling said.

“From a purely economic perspective, it is clear that Germany, like any other Western countries, are very much dependent on migration,” he added.

Israel’s war on Gaza

Although thousands of kilometres away, the genocide in Gaza has cast a long shadow on the political discourse in Germany since the start of the war.

Berlin firmly stands by its ally Israel, justifying its solidarity based on historical feelings of guilt for the Holocaust. Germany has also been one of Israel’s most prolific weapon suppliers.

Rehrmann, the MERA25 candidate, said Germany’s current anti-immigration rhetoric is also tied to Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We have seen people coming from the Middle East [to Germany], being considered not only as a threat, but also the main source of anti-Semitism in Germany,” she said. “This is something that Merz and the far-right AfD have said.”

Some 100,000 people of Palestinian descent live in Germany, a quarter of them in Berlin’s Neukoelln district.

German police actively crack down on the weekly pro-Palestinian protests in Berlin and other cities while local media often tag the protests – as well as Arab or Muslim gatherings – as fertile grounds for anti-Semitism, a crime punishable by a two-year term or a fine.

Last November, in the wake of huge protests against Israel, the Bundestag adopted stricter definitions of anti-Semitism even as rights groups like Amnesty International, and a handful of MPs warned that could violate international law.

Police, in January, also banned all languages except German and English at pro-Palestine demonstrations. Officials cited increased crimes and anti-Semitism during the protests, but critics say it’s an attempt to target Arabic speakers.

Since the Gaza war started, Islamophobia in Germany has skyrocketed, according to rights monitoring group, Claim. Incidents, such as verbal attacks on Muslims or attacks on mosques, went up by 114 percent between 2022 and 2023, the organisation reported.

Hugh Williamson, a Human Rights Watch director based in Berlin, said the negative rhetoric, including blaming violence by individuals on entire groups, is concerning. He also warned that the adoption of more far-right policies by the mainstream parties is not the answer.

“While this may be intended to draw away support, we’ve seen time and time again in Europe that it has the opposite effect, normalising anti-rights politics and parties in ways that make it easier for voters to support them.”