The German cabinet approved a draft law on Wednesday (February 22) which in certain instances will allow the agency for migration and refugees (BAMF) to “evaluate” migrants’ mobile phone data to speed up their deportation process once they were refused refugee status.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters it was “not asking too much to correctly answer to the state from which someone seeks protection what one’s name is and what country one is from.”
De Maiziere said that while identity checks are “best done with a passport or a personal document,” this was not always possible.
Reports have repeatedly appeared in German media of migrants deliberately destroying their travel documents to hide their identity.
De Maiziere said the new law was “above all about cases where, for example, someone calls Sudan 90 times and claims that he is from Eritrea. There are quite a few indications that we’re talking about a Sudanese and not an Eritrean. That’s what these checks are for and such is the draft law.”
Last month, the Federal Statistics office said Germany’s population grew by some 600,000 last year to reach a record high of 82.8 million people due to the number of migrants which have arrived in the country.
(REUTERS)