BERLIN (AP) – Germany's opposition leader vowed Thursday to ban people from entering the country without proper papers and halt deportations if elected chancellor next month, as knife attack by a rejected asylum seeker over to an election campaign in which he is leading.
Two people, including a 2-year-old boy, were killed and three others injured on Wednesday in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg. The suspect, who was arrested shortly after, is a 28-year-old Afghan with a history of mental health problems and violence who said more than a month ago that he would leave Germany voluntarily.
His asylum claim was rejected in 2023 and the authorities failed to send him back to Bulgaria, where he first arrived in the European Union, according to Bavarian officials, who pointed the finger at the federal migration office. .
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose centre-left party is leading the polls in Germany February 23 electionthey met with the heads of the country's security services on Wednesday night and said they would draw “the necessary consequences.” Now.” He did not specify what they would be.
His main election opponent, Friedrich Merz, whose centre-right Unionist bloc is leading the polls, has stepped up his party's pledges to strengthen migration policy. He said Germany has had a “fake asylum and immigration policy” for 10 years – because Angela Merkel, chancellor from her own party and a former rival of Merz, allowed large numbers of migrants into the country.
Merz said that if he becomes chancellor, he would order the Interior Ministry on his first day in office to permanently control all of Germany's borders and “all attempts to get illegally entered without exception.” He argued that EU rules are “recognizably abusive” and Germany must be entitled to the primacy of national law.
Merz said that people who are supposed to leave the country no longer have to leave the country if they are picked up by the police and that they should be arrested and deported as soon as possible, with the help of increased detention capacity.
Merz, who may have to form a coalition with center-left parties to become chancellor, said that “it is no longer possible to compromise on these issues.”
The outgoing government has already been established temporary controls on all German borders and has argued that progress has been made in reducing unauthorized entry and increasing exports.
The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks Mannheim and Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria respectively; in the latter case, also a rejected asylum seeker. In last month's Christmas market car ram attack in Magdeburg, the suspect is a Saudi doctor who had come to the attention of various regional authorities in the past.
Mainstream parties are feeling pressure from the strong polling numbers of the far-right Alternative for Germany, with whom they all say they will not work after the election. Unhappiness about migration is a major basis of his support, which recent surveys show at around 20%, putting him in second place.
Alice WeidelGermany's candidate for Chancellor said on social media platform X that the outgoing parliament should vote next week on closing Germany's borders and turning back irregular migrants.
German authorities have said that 229,751 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, a 30% decrease from the previous year. 18,384 were exported in the first 11 months of the year, compared to 16,430 in all of 2023.
Politicians protested on Thursday that no further exports to Afghanistan have taken place since then the first flight in August.
