German minister says deportations will rise after Cologne attacks

Supporters of PEGIDA, Hogesa (Hooligans Against Salafists), and other right-wing populist groups gather to protest against the New Year’s Eve sex attacks on January 9, 2016, in Cologne, Germany.

Faced with consternation within her Christian Democratic Union party and attacks on foreigners in Cologne over the weekend, Merkel sought to add urgency to her response as the political fallout from the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults threatens her open-door stance toward asylum seekers.

In a display of bipartisanship, conservative Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Social Democrat Justice Minister Heiko Maas announced Tuesday a proposal that “sharply lowers the hurdles for the possible expulsion of foreigners who have committed crimes in Germany”.

The changes, which have to be approved by the Cabinet and Parliament, would mean that any custodial sentence for crimes against another person’s bodily integrity, including sexual assaults, as well as violent thefts, would be grounds for deportation. Around 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany in 2015. In November, only a slim majority said the arrival figures were two high, while 42 per cent said they were acceptable and a fifth of respondents said the country could welcome more refugees.

On Monday evening, the group of right-wingers who vandalised part of Leipzig held a placard reading “Leipzig bleibt Helle”, or “Leipzig stays light”, an apparent reference to the skin colour of residents.

David Furtner, spokesman for the Upper Austria Federal Police, said that since December, Austria and Germany had had a “memorandum of understanding” that they would only turn back a maximum of 60 migrants per day.

Several men have been arrested in connection with the New Year’s Eve attacks, but police are continuing their investigations and are expected to make more arrests in the coming days.

An official report said the attackers were “almost exclusively” from a migration background, mainly North African and Arab. Cologne police also made “serious mistakes” in not calling reinforcements and the way they informed the public.

Currently, it is much more hard for Germany to deport immigrants to countries not deemed “safe”.

Waving a sign declaring “State of injustice”, 44-year-old demonstrator Lukas Richter said “Merkel is breaching the constitution and must go”, and that “the government must close the borders and return all illegal migrants”. In future, sexual assault or rape would be prosecutable “if a woman could not defend herself because an element of surprise has been exploited… or because she didn’t resist due to fear of more violence”.

“I am not saying that there was no organisation, but it is not organised crime”, he said.

According to the German Interior Ministry, 29 of the 32 suspects in the incident are registered as asylum seekers in the country.