Two Million Euro Deportation Centre Deports Just 86 Migrants a Year

The regional government in Hamburg relocated their deportation detention centre last year and so far the new location has cost 2.4 million euros, despite only facilitating the deportation of fewer than a hundred people.

The new facility, which places failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants in detention to await their deportation, opened in October 2016, located at the Hamburg international airport, and has so far led to the deportation of a mere 84 migrants, Hamburger Morgenpost reports.

The report comes after a formal request into the matter by Cansu Özdemir, a local member of the Left Party, who said that the costs associated with the deportation centre were “enormously high”.

“The money should be invested in the integration of refugees and not in questionable deportation prisons,” Özdemir said.

Dennis Gladiator, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said “The costs are still comparatively low,” and added that if the migrants were allowed to roam free, the individual costs would be even greater.

Gladiator did criticise the Hamburg government for not utilising the deportation centre enough.

Actual deportation of illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers compared to the number of illegals present have been so low over the past two years as to be almost non-existent. There are an estimated 250,000 individuals who are living in the country illegally, and there is scepticism that the government will ever be able to deport them all.

Head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) Horst Seehofer, who is a coalition partner of Chancellor Merkel, said: “The question of deportation is a great illusion in Germany. It is almost impossible to send back the migrants once they are in the country.”

In 2016 alone, there were around 8,000 migrants from North Africa who had their asylum claims rejected but the government was only able to manage to deport 368 of them.

Last year, Chancellor Merkel promised to increase the number of deportations, especially to Afghanistan. When the federal government attempted the increase they were met with a lack of cooperation from left-wing coalition regional governments and protests by open-borders activists.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com