Thousands of migrants missing in Germany

According to a report in Die Welt newspaper, state authorities in Brandenburg “are looking for thousands of refugees” whose “whereabouts are unknown”.

German officials are hunting for over 3 000 refugees in one state alone who had vanished off the radar. Most came to Germany in 2015 via the so-called Balkan route, and fears are rising that a number of those who have gone underground may be sleepers for the Islamic State (ISIS).

The missing migrants were reported in the state of Brandenburg close to the capital Berlin, when the public prosecutor’s office began retroactive checks on the asylum seekers. “Fifteen to 20 percent of 18 000 refugees are obviously submerged,” said prosecutor Ulrich Scherding.

Officials admitted that during the chaos of the crisis the data of thousands of migrants was “inadequately captured” and those who have disappeared might be biding their time until their jihadist paymasters give them orders to commit acts of terror.

Most entered Brandenburg via Hungary and Austria during 2015, but their current whereabouts are unclear, admitted the state’s Deputy Interior Ministry spokesman Wolfgang Brandt.

An SPD politician, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schröter, said while it is “well known that many people who came to Germany at the height of the refugee movement later disappeared off the radar,” the technology to fingerprint all 47 000 refugees arriving in 2015, simply did not exist, but “now authorities are equipped with fingerprint storage technology”.

It is thus likely that if the 20 percent “missing” rate is replicated throughout Germany, it would mean that tens of thousands of migrants could just have “vanished” since 2015, but the hope among security officials is that some of the missing crossed the border to other countries.

Last week Angela Merkel repeated that it was Europe’s duty to take in more migrants, despite a public outcry. Speaking at the Munich security conference, Merkel also said Islam was not a source of terror after several deadly terror attacks in Berlin, as well as Paris and Nice.

Meanwhile, the state of North Rhine Westphalia, where a coalition between the SPD and the Green Party rules, announced that all Afghan “refugees” living in that state will not be handed over to the central government for deportation, even though Afghanistan was declared a “safe” country.

The state of Schleswig-Holstein issued a similar statement, but Jutta Cordt, the newly-appointed head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), noted that there “are areas in Afghanistan that are considered relatively safe. There are domestic escape alternatives.”