Saxony wants to gradually expand departure center

Saxony wants to gradually build up its planned departure center for rejected asylum seekers. "We will start with 20 or 30 places and gather experience," Interior Minister Armin Schuster (CDU) told the German Press Agency. He wants to relieve the municipalities of "not very simple cases". "In the medium term, the center should have a capacity of around 100 places, but the decisive factor will be the fluctuation."

Migrants should stay in the departure center at night

According to Schuster, some of those affected ask themselves why they are still in Germany at all. The departure center is also intended for people who repeatedly abscond. "Our center is not a detention facility. Nevertheless, there will be rules." For example, residents will have to stay in the building at night and expect restrictions if they do not cooperate.

There is no blueprint for the project nationwide

"There is no preference for a location yet. We deliberately called it a pilot project because we want to experiment. The experiment is not that easy," said the minister. This is because there is no blueprint for the departure center nationwide. At the moment, more than 60 percent of deportations in Saxony fail - often because those affected cannot be found. "We need a procedure to make it more difficult to abscond."

In their coalition agreement, the CDU and SPD had agreed to test the departure center. "With the pilot project, we are testing how we can noticeably reduce the burden on local authorities when returning people and how we can further increase the success rate of deportations," explained Schuster. The residence requirement should apply to those affected. This means that they are generally obliged to stay there.

Saxony deported 864 rejected asylum seekers by November

In Saxony, 27,409 migrants are currently undergoing an asylum procedure. 11,951 people are obliged to leave the country, but 9,729 of them have a tolerated stay. By the end of November, 864 rejected asylum seekers had already been deported this year, compared to 845 in the entire previous year - most of them had to return to their home countries of Georgia, Tunisia and North Macedonia.