BAMBERG, Germany (AP) – Faced with an unprecedented influx of refugees and growing anxiety among voters, German authorities have stepped up the deportation of failed asylum-seekers.
New figures show that the number of deportations almost doubled this year from 2014. By the end of November, authorities had deported 18,363 people whose asylum request had been rejected, compared to 10,884 in all of last year.
“(The increase) can be explained on the one hand simply by the increasing number of people who are getting negative (asylum) decisions,” Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said Monday.
But the trend is also affected “by the states’ increasing willingness to carry out these procedures,” he said.
The task of handling asylum requests falls to Germany’s 16 states and some have been more rigorous in applying the law than others.