In 2017, a total of 23.966 people were deported from Germany to 115 different countries around the globe. The map on the title page shows these “destinations” of forced removal. This case study presents and analyzes some significant changes in the German deportation system that occurred from 2012-2017 and the role of private actors in this context. Deportations connect different physical, legal, and political spaces and places and involve a wide range of actors, outside the ‘inner circle’ of state officials and people who are subject to forced removal. The role of private actors involved in the deportation system has received little or no attention in academic literature thus far. To address this gap, the author explores changes in the deportation corridors (Drotbohm & Hasselberg 2015) that connect the city-state of Hamburg, Germany with destinations of forced removal from the perspective of a participant observer. What role do private actors play in this highly politicized field? Who profits financially from the state-sanctioned practice of deportation? What does the privatization of parts of the deportation system entail in terms of transparency and democracy? This paper addresses these and other questions based on the thesis that deportation is becoming a business in and of itself. This study found that private actors play a significant role in the marketization, humanitarianization, and digitization of parts of the German deportation system. Seeking “innovative concepts” and “solutions” to problems related to deportation, public actors helped create markets in which private firms are competing. The city of Hamburg, the German Federal Government, and the EU mobilized financial resources, aiming at creating more effective deportation systems. These financial flows connect public actors with management consultancies (delivering “expert”-knowledge), software companies, (delivering surveillance technology), and development companies and NGOs, who both play the role of humanitarian actors in emerging transnational return networks. Some of the transformation processes are related to the deterioration of the quality of asylum procedures and the intensification of the deportation policy in Hamburg and Germany respectively. At the same time, this transformation is related to the enhancement of the status of Appeals Courts, and to new counter strategies employed by deportees and activists who challenge the deportation regime.