(Reuters) Germany failed to deport 27,000 rejected asylum seekers last year, nearly half of the total 57,000 cases, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Sunday, adding that the government would step up efforts to get those migrants out of the country.
Seehofer, a member of the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, is one of the sharpest critics of her decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to more than 1 million refugees.
Merkel has repeatedly defended the decision she took at the height of the European refugee crisis, but has said she would prevent any repeat and focus on the root causes of migration.
