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Germany Cracks Down on Asylum Seekers One Day After Friedrich Merz Becomes Chancellor

HeadlineMay 08, 2025

In Germany, Friedrich Merz was elected as chancellor Tuesday in a second round of parliamentary voting, just hours after he failed to clinch the ballot in the first round — a first in postwar Germany.

The new government announced Wednesday Germany will start rejecting undocumented migrants at its border, and plans to deploy thousands more police officers to crack down on arrivals. The move undoes a 2015 order by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose leadership was defined in large part by her welcoming of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, many of whom had fled war in Syria.

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