Faced with a steep increase in the number of migrants and refugees arriving in the country, the German government approved a draft law on Wednesday which aims to accelerate the deportation of rejected asylum seekers.
In order to give authorities more time to prepare for deportations, the maximum duration of pre-deportation custody is to be increased from 10 days to 28 days.
The draft law still needs to be approved by the lower house of the German Parliament (Bundestag).
“With this bill, we are ensuring that people without the right to stay have to leave our country more quickly,” Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said. “In this way, we are strengthening society’s support for the admission of refugees to Germany.”
The deportation of members of criminal organizations is to be made significantly easier, according to the Ministry of the Interior (BMI).
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has vowed to take tougher action on irregular migration. “We must finally deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany,” he told the German magazine Spiegel recently.
Last week, Germany notified the European Commission that temporary border checks will be carried out at the country’s borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland to combat human smuggling and to restrict irregular migration.
By the beginning of October, the Federal Police had already detected around 98,000 unauthorized entries into Germany, 6,000 more than in the whole of last year.
“Smuggling is thought to account for one in four illegal entries by third-country nationals into Germany,” the BMI said.
