New German interior minister ramps up police presence at borders

Germany’s new Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is deploying more police officers to the country’s borders to curb irregular migration, dpa learnt on Wednesday, one day after a new conservative-led government took office in Berlin.

Dobrindt, from the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), is due to meet Federal Police President Dieter Romann and the president of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Hans-Eckhard Sommer, for consultations later today, sources told dpa.

The chairman of the GdP police union, Andreas Rosskopf, told the Rheinische Post newspaper that police have begun to increase the number of officers deployed to the country’s land borders after receiving verbal instruction to do so.

The border force has been instructed to reorganize rosters where necessary “in order to achieve greater availability,” he said.

Both Dobrindt and Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz campaigned on promises to bring down irregular migration by increasing rejections at the country’s borders, including of asylum seekers, vowing to ramp up checks on day one of taking office.

Critics argue that barring people from claiming asylum violates EU law, while police unions have long warned that federal police might reach their limit if more officers are deployed to the border.

Supporters of the course argue that bringing down the number of arrivals would help to ease the burden elsewhere, with police having to take the details of fewer people and accompany fewer asylum seekers to reception centres.

Germany, like most EU countries is a part of the visa-free Schengen area that abolished border checks between its members, first reintroduced temporary checks on its southern border with Austria in 2015. According to EU rules, the measures are temporary and have to be extended every few months.

Under the previous centre-left administration, Germany gradually implemented temporary checks across all its land borders.

German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the contingent of federal police on standby at the border will apparently be doubled to about 1,200 officers, with mobile check and surveillance units soon to be added.

In addition, officers in the border inspectorates are to work 12-hour shifts in future, according to the report.