Germany to Build Deportation Centers for Unwanted Migrants – Reports
SputnikNews.com
21.05.2018
Mass holding centers being set up in Germany to house unsuccessful asylum seekers and speed up their deportations threaten to undermine the country’s image of a welcoming nation, an aid group has warned.
They fear that anchor centers — an acronym for arrival, decision, return – which the Interior Ministry plans to spread across the country will stoke social tension between local residents and migrants amid a populist backlash against the government’s handling of the refugee crisis, The Guardian wrote.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer is justifying the decision to roll out such anchor centers because of the difficulty in deporting “people without protected status after they have been spread out across the country and put down roots in our cities and communities.”
One such center which already exists in Bavaria and is meant as a prototype for the plan, suffers from high crime rates, mass protests and rising tensions between asylum seekers and security forces.
A converted army compound in Manching, Upper Bavaria, currently holds about 1,100 people, mainly from the western Balkans, Ukraine, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
Lucky Raphael, a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Nigeria, said that the inmates are not allowed to lock their rooms, cook their own food or go outside to look for a job or attend school.
“It is like a prison. We can go outside, but always in the fear that we could be arrested” he told the newspaper.
Anchor centers send a clear signal to migrants who have little chance of being allowed to stay in in the country amid a heated political debate about Germany’s failure to deport asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected.
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