Aschaffenburg: GdP considers rejection at borders to be “not feasible”

The police union (GdP) considers comprehensive controls and rejections at the German borders to be unenforceable. “We have a length of 3,800 kilometers of internal borders. We are on the verge of what is possible with the way we already operate the border controls,” said the GdP chairman for the federal police department, Andreas Roßkopf, on Friday on MDR. Radio. Merz’s plans require “not just hundreds, but thousands more colleagues.”

The fact that Merz wanted to reject all refugees without valid documents was therefore “unfeasible,” said Roßkopf. New civil servants also have to be trained first, which takes between two and a half and three years. In his view, investments in modern tools such as drone and license plate recognition technology are also necessary.

After the knife attack in Aschaffenburg that left two dead, Union candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) announced far-reaching tightening of asylum policy if he were elected chancellor. Accordingly, on his first day in office, he wants to instruct the Ministry of the Interior to permanently control all borders and enforce a “de facto entry ban” for all people without valid papers – including those with a claim to protection.

The GdP is instead calling for the security authorities to be strengthened before the federal election. “We now need quick solutions,” said chairman Jochen Kopelke to the Editorial Network Germany (RND).

The current debate about immigration does not fully reflect the actual situation. “The enforcement problems of the immigration authorities and the lack of deportation places are still not solved politically and cannot be solved by order, but only in cooperation with the responsible state governments,” he said. The “many enforcement problems with weapons law, immigration law, criminal law” have not been resolved by politicians for years. “A German security strategy is needed and it costs a lot of money and should have been in place long ago,” said the GdP leader, who also spoke out in favor of mandatory medical monitoring of violent, mentally ill people.