This was revealed by X-ray examinations done in people where authorities had expressed doubts about their age.
The director of the Legal Medicine Institute at UKE, Klaus Püschel, explained that dubious cases were sent to the university hospital, according to the Hamburger Morgenpost.
Last year, 96 such cases from Hamburg were sent to the university hospital, as well as young asylum seekers from the surrounding area and from Berlin were examined at the UKE. “These are normal medical examinations, without an ulterior motive,” said Püschel.
The standardized investigation procedures are not complex and could be carried out nationwide, he clarified.
If the Home Office has concerns about whether an immigrant without identity papers is actually a minor, the Social Security Code requires that they be examined – but only with the consent of the person concerned. If he refuses, “then he will be considered as an adult,” said the spokesman of the Hamburg Office for Labor, Social Affairs, Family and Integration (BASFI), Marcel Schweitzer.
The examination usually involves a dental examination, if necessary a radiological examination. In this case, the jaw is usually x-rayed, occasionally also the finger bones. The doctors then use the results to indicate an age range.
The authorities then take the youngest age within this range to favour of the asylum seeker.
At the height of the migrant crisis in 2015, 2 572 minors came to Hamburg. There was doubt about the age of 767 of them and they were X-rayed at the UKE. Of these, only 41 percent were of legal age.
As adults, immigrants lose numerous privileges. Minors are not deported, they live in housing groups, caretakers take care of them, they have a right to education, and they are convicted of crimes under juvenile law.
AfD politicians have long since pushed for age determination by means of medical entrance examinations.
Only on Wednesday, the AfD Bundestag Deputy Harald Weyel campaigned for refugees who can not prove their date of birth with documentation, to have their age determined in the course of an initial medical examination. Finally, every refugee applying for asylum in Germany has to go through this investigation, Weyel says.
Paragraph 62 of the Asylum Law states: “Foreigners residing in reception centers or communal accommodation are required to tolerate a medical examination for communicable diseases, including X-rays of the respiratory system.”