Illegal migrant avoids deportation despite 542 crimes

The reason given for this strange state of affairs, is that German authorities do not know which country to deport him to. In the meantime, the migrant – whose name is unknown – has been allowed carry on living in the country, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.

The unidentified migrant’s crime record is extensive, ranging from theft to drug possession to assault to several immigration violations.  He has claimed to be from either Algeria, Morocco or other North African countries, but no state would confirm his residency.

He has even refused to reveal his name to German authorities, while database searches of his fingerprints have yielded no matches.

The migrant, thought to be around 59 years old, reportedly lives on the streets of Frankfurt. High commissioner Ruedigar Buchta told Bild: “A third of the proceedings were for possession and purchase of narcotics.

“Some were for the fraudulent acquisition of services like fare dodging. Added to this is assault, theft and robbery, and many offences against the Residence Act.”

Police data cited by the German newspaper Die Welt showed that out of the 23 900 extraditions that German police carried out between January and May 2018, 12 800 have failed for various reasons. The Federal Police are responsible for deporting people who are required to leave the country.

Last year, some 30 000 failed asylum seekers due for deportation were unaccounted for within Germany’s refugee processing system and are believed to have disappeared.

Many are believed to live under the radar, protected by family or friends in an environment that police and other agencies find difficult to penetrate.

According to the government, 54 437 people were liable to be deported after their asylum applications failed in 2016. Yet according to the Federal Statistical office only 23 617 of these were ejected. What happened to the remaining 30 820 people is unknown.

“It cannot be ruled out that, in individual cases, persons registered in the Central Register of Foreigners may have already travelled or submerged,” a government spokesperson told The Times at the time.

Moreover ,at least 130 000 asylum seekers had disappeared in 2016, according to official government figures, raising concerns over terrorism and organised crime. In a parliamentary answer, Angela Merkel’s coalition on government said it had lost track of at least 13 percent of the newcomers.

The figures emerged in 2016 just two months after unconfirmed reports the German authorities were urgently searching for 12 asylum seekers who had vanished. They were believed to have crossed the border using forged passports from the same source as those used by the Paris attackers.

The current case exposes flaws in the existing German migration policy, Michael Seyfert, a migration spokesman of Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told RT.

“It is a failure of the system; it is a failure of the government,” he said. According to Seyfert, German authorities simply “do not dare to [extradite people] as they are afraid of the left-wing media and… protests. NGOs… protest against it and even try to prevent [deportations] physically”.

Ernst Walter, the chairman of Germany’s DPolG police union, told DW that the increase in migrants those who cannot be deported, came as a result of the migrant influx.

“It also has to do with the fact that more and more people are trying to disguise their identity to avoid the risk of being deported,” Walter said. “And, as the authorities, our job is to establish the rule of law. Of course it can’t be that someone who throws away his passport and conceals his identity gets right of residence while the one who was honest is deported.”

The German Interior Ministry said 65 000 people who should have left Germany were granted exceptional leave to remain last year because they could present no credible documents. That is almost twice as many as the year before.

Popular anger reached a new high in the German city of Chemnitz after migrants were accused of fatally stabbing a German man in an altercation last week.

One government survey recently found that 90 percent of violent crimes committed in the German state of Lower Saxony could be attributed to refugees.